and animals. The land was good, and there were mines of gold, silver, &c. Ælianus referred to a country west of Europe and Africa. [Ælian variar. Historian, or Ælian's work, in English.] Ælian or Ælianus lived about A.D. 200—230.
Hanno. an African, flourished when the Carthaginins were in their greatest prosperity, but the exact time is unknown. Some place his times 40 and others 140 years before the founding of Rome, which would be about 800 years before our era. [Encyclopædia Perthensis.] He was an officer of great enterprise; having sailed around and explored the coast of Africa, he set out from the Pillars of Hercules, now called the straits of Gibraltar, and sailed westward thirty days. Hence it is inferred by many that he must have visited America, or some of its islands. He wrote a book, which he entitled Periplus, giving an account of his voyages, which was translated and published about 1533, in Greek. [The best account of Hanno and his voyages, with which we are acquainted, is to be found in Marianna's History of Spain.]
Many, and not without tolerably good reasons, believe that an island or continent existed in the Atlantic Ocean about this period, but which disappeared afterwards.
Diodorus Siculus says that some "Phœnicians were cast upon a most fertile island opposite to Africa." Of this, he says, they kept the most studied secrecy, which was doubtless occasioned by their jealousy of the advantage the discovery might be to the neighboring nations, and which they wished to secure wholly to themselves. Diodorus Siculus lived about 100 years before Christ. Islands lying west of Europe and Africa are certainly mentioned by Homer and Horace. They were called Atlantides, and were supposed to be about 1000 furlongs from Africa.
Plato, an Ethiopian and an eminent Greek historian. His account has more weight, perhaps, than any of the ancients. He lived about 400 years before the Christian era. A part of his account is as follows: "In those first times [time of its being first known] the Atlantic was a most broad island, and there were extant most powerful kings in it, who, with joint forces, appointed to occupy Asia and Euiope, and so a most grievous war was carried on, in which the Athenians with the common consent of the Greeks, opposed
