ceived with doubt. For their mythology taught that beyond the Ocean lay the Elysian fields, the regions of the Blest:

^{(Greek characters)} Odys. IV. 564-8.

"The blissful plains Of utmost earth where Rhadamanthus reigns. Joys ever young, unmixed with pain or fear, Fill the wide circle of th' eternal year: Stern winter smiles on that auspicious clime: The fields are florid with unfading prime. From the bleak pole no winds inclement blow, Mould the round hail, or flake the fleecy snow, But from the breezy deep the blest inhale The fragrant murmurs of the western gale."

The ideas which Greek mythology thus associated with the west were very different from those connected with the other extremities of the world, and bear a striking resemblance to the accounts given by the first Spanish discoveries. Greek mythology was in a great measure a system founded on events which had taken place in the earliest ages of the world, the recollection of which was imperfectly handed down to later times; and in this instance the popular belief actually was that land did exist beyond the Atlantic, and that Ocean was not a boundless expanse of sea.

The statement given by Plato in the Timæus is generally treated as if it was altogether unsupported by the testimony of any other writer. But it will be shown that this is not the case. The passage is as follows,

^{(Greek characters)} Platonis Timæus.

"For at that time the sea in those parts was navigable; for it had an island before its mouth which you call 'Hercules' Pillars', and the island was larger than Africa and Asia together, and from it there was access to the other islands for the men of that time in their journeyings, and from the islands to the whole opposite (literally directly opposite) continent that