Chapter IV.
CORROBORATING CIRCUMSTANCES.
1. Lenormant insists that the human race issued from Upa-Merou, and adds that some Greek traditions point to "this locality—particularly the expression μέροπες ἄνθρωποι, which can only mean 'the men sprung from Merou.'" ("Manual," p. 21.)
Theopompus tells us that the people who inhabited Atlantis were the Meropes, the people of Merou.
2. Whence comes the word Atlantic? The dictionaries tell us that the ocean is named after the mountains of Atlas; but whence did the Atlas mountains get their name?
"The words Atlas and Atlantic have no satisfactory etymology in any language known to Europe. They are not Greek, and cannot be referred to any known language of the Old World. But in the Nahuatl language we find immediately the radical a, atl, which signifies water, war, and the top of the head. (Molina, "Vocab. en lengua Mexicana y Castellana.") From this comes a series of words, such as atlan—on the border of or amid the water—from which we have the adjective Atlantic. We have also atlaca, to combat, or be in agony; it means likewise to hurl or dart from the water, and in the preterit makes Atlaz. A city named Atlan existed when the continent was discovered by Columbus, at the entrance of the Gulf of Uraba, in Darien. With a good harbor, it is now reduced to an unimportant pueblo named Acla." (Baldwin's "Ancient America," p. 179.)
Plato tells us that Atlantis and the Atlantic Ocean were named after Atlas, the eldest son of Poseidon, the founder of the kingdom.
3. Upon that part of the African continent nearest to the site
