Farther on again,
long lines of sunken walls and broad, deserted streets--
a perfect Pompeii escaped beneath the waters. Such was the sight
that Captain Nemo brought before my eyes!
Where was I? Where was I? I must know at any cost.
I tried to speak, but Captain Nemo stopped me by a gesture,
and, picking up a piece of chalk-stone, advanced to a rock
of black basalt, and traced the one word:
ATLANTIS
What a light shot through my mind! Atlantis! the Atlantis
of Plato, that continent denied by Origen and Humbolt,
who placed its disappearance amongst the legendary tales.
I had it there now before my eyes, bearing upon it
the unexceptionable testimony of its catastrophe.
The region thus engulfed was beyond Europe, Asia, and Lybia,
beyond the columns of Hercules, where those powerful people,
the Atlantides, lived, against whom the first wars of ancient
Greeks were waged.
Thus, led by the strangest destiny, I was treading under foot
the mountains of this continent, touching with my hand those ruins
a thousand generations old and contemporary with the geological epochs.
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