The islanders had also baths and gardens and sea-walls, and theyhad twelve hundred ships and ten thousand chariots. All this was in theroyal city alone, and the people were friendly and good andwell-affectioned towards all. But as time went on they grew less so, andthey did not obey the laws, so that they offended heaven. In a single dayand night the island disappeared and sank beneath the sea; and this is whythe sea in that region grew so impassable and impenetrable, because thereis a quantity of shallow mud in the way, and this was caused by thesinking of a single vast island.""This is the tale," said Solon, "which the old Egyptian priest told tome." And Solon's tale was read by Socrates, the boy, as he lay in thegrass; and he told it to his friends after he grew up, as is written inhis dialogues recorded by his disciple, Plato. And though this greatisland of Atlantis has never been seen again, yet a great many smallerislands have been found in the Atlantic Ocean, and they have sometimesbeen lost to sight and found again.There is, also, in this ocean a vast tract of floating seaweed, called bysailors the Sargasso Sea,--covering a region as large as France,--and thishas been thought by many to mark the place of a sunken island. There arealso many islands, such as the Azores, which have been supposed atdifferent times to be fragments of Atlantis; and besides all this, theremains of the vanished island have been looked for in all parts of theworld.
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