could not land, as the sides are too steep:  they pass underneath the river by a natural tunnel, or subway.’  He and all his party went through it on their way from Loowemba to Ooroongoo, and returned by it.  He described its length as having taken them from sunrise till noon to pass through it, and so high that, if mounted upon camels, they could not touch the top.  Tall reeds, the thickness of a walking-stick, grew inside, the road was strewed with white pebbles, and so wide—­four hundred yards—­that they could see their way tolerably well while passing through it.  The rocks looked as if they had been planed by artificial means.  Water never came through from the river overhead; it was procured by digging wells.  Manua added that the people of Wambweh take shelter in this tunnel, and live there with their families and cattle, when molested by the Watuta, a warlike race, descended from the Zooloo Kafirs.

But it is interesting to find in this book of Votan, however little reliance we may place in its dates or details, evidence that there was actual intercourse between the Old World and the New in remote ages.

Humboldt remarks: 

“We have fixed the special attention of our readers upon this Votan, or Wodan, an American who appears of the same family with the Wods or Odins of the Goths and of the people of Celtic origin.  Since, according to the learned researches of Sir William Jones, Odin and Buddha are probably the same person, it is curious to see the names of Bondvar, Wodansday, and Votan designating in India, Scandinavia, and in Mexico the day of a brief period.” ("Vues des Cordilleras,” p. 148, ed. 1810.)

There are many things to connect the mythology of the Gothic nations with Atlantis; they had, as we have seen, flood legends; their gods Krodo and Satar were the Chronos and Saturn of Atlantis; their Baal was the Bel of the Phoenicians, who were closely connected with Poseidon and Atlas; and, as we shall see hereafter, their language has a distinct relationship with the tongues of the Arabians, Cushites, Chaldeans, and Phoenicians.

CHAPTER V.

The pyramid, the cross, and the garden of Eden.

No fact is better established than the reverence shown to the sign of the Cross in all the ages prior to Christianity.  We cannot do better than quote from an able article in the Edinburgh Review of July, 1870, upon this question: 

“From the dawn of organized Paganism in the Eastern world to the final establishment of Christianity in the Western, the Cross was undoubtedly one of the commonest and most sacred of symbolical monuments; and, to a remarkable extent, it is so still in almost every land where that of Calvary is unrecognized or unknown.  Apart from any distinctions of social or intellectual superiority, of caste, color, nationality, or location in either hemisphere, it appears to have