"Owing to a succession of storms the _Peterkin_ was driven out of her course, and after narrowly escaping being dashed to pieces on the Florida reefs, Lat. 24-1/2° N., Long. 82° W., we ran ashore with the loss of only two lives--the second mate and cabin boy--on the Isthmus of Yucatan, close to the estuary of a river.[1] Here we were forced to spend nearly a year, during which time I made several journeys of exploration into the interior of the continent. In the course of one of my rambles amid a dense mass of tropical foliage, I suddenly found myself face to face with a gigantic stone Sphinx, which I at once recognized and identified. It was Tat-Nuada, an Atlantean deity, elaborately described in one of the burned books. Much excited, I set to work, and, after clearing the base of the idol of fungi and other vegetable growth adhering to it, discovered a superscription in Atlantean dialect to the effect that the image had been set up there by one Hullir--to commemorate the destruction of Atlantis, of which catastrophe Hullir believed himself and his family, _i.e._ his wife Ozilmeave and daughters, Taramoo and Nikétoth, and the crew of his yacht, the _Chaac-molré_ (ten in number), the sole survivors. "Here, then, to my unutterable joy, was strong corroborative evidence of the great disaster narrated in detail in the manuscripts I had found in Inisturk Island. The existence of Atlantis was now thoroughly substantiated. On all sides of me I stumbled across further evidences of these early settlers. Here, standing in bold outline on a slight eminence, was a stone edifice adorned with symbolical carvings of eggs, harps, mastodons, triangles, and numerous other objects, all of which were capable of interpretation, and indicated that the building was a temple to some god. "I was much struck by the extraordinary similarity in many of the things I saw--notably in the sphinx, idols and symbols--to many I had seen in Egypt, and to some extent in Ireland, and I at once set to work to draw up a careful analogy between the languages of those countries. "The word Banchicheisi[2] I found to contain the Celtic ban, a barrow; and Coptic isi, plenty; whilst I recognized in the words Coulmenes,[3] the Celtic Coul, a man's name, _i.e._ Finn, son of Coul; in Thottirnanoge, the Coptic Thoth, _i.e._ name of ancient Egyptian deity, and Erse Tirnanoge, the name of the wife of Oisin, the last of the Feni; in Chaac-molrée[4] the Coptic deity, ré; in Ozilmeave,[5] the Celtic Meave, a girl's name; in Taramoo,[6] the Celtic Tara, a girl's name; and in Nikétoth,[7] toth, the Erse technical form of feminine gender; and comparing the alphabets I traced a very striking likeness between the Atlantean-- "[Atlantean: a] (a) and the Gaelic or Erse [Erse: A] [Atlantean: B] (B) and the Coptic [Coptic: B] [Atlantean: d] (d) and Erse [Erse: D] [Atlantean: g] (g) and Erse [Erse: g] [Atlantean: T] (T) and Coptic [Coptic: T] "and many of the other letters. To the Atlantean