1972 cont.

A Letter From Donnelly, By Leslie M. Young (Minnesota US legislator Ignatius Donnelly, who wrote ‘Atlantis’ to Gladstone Prime Minister of England)

"Donnelly having received an acknowledgement from Gladstone who had received a copy of his Atlantis: the Antediluvian World (1882) again replies to the Prime Minister."

As noted in the earlier journal or the previous webpage Gladstone did acknowledge Donnelly’s letter and was not unresponsive.

"Probably encouraged by what appears to have been the Prime Minister’s not unsympathetic suggestions, the American Politician’s epistle is much longer then the first and can be said to fall into two distinct parts. The first of these amplifies a tentative suggestion hinted at by Gladstone concerning the text of Homer, which was to the effect that the Greek poet believed the north of Europe to be covered with water. It cannot here be assessed whether this was a misinterpretation of Homeric text or whether this was a misunderstanding on the part of the Greek Poet, of some geographical knowledge that was obtained either from the sources which comprised the framework of the Illiad and the Odyssey. All that can be affirmed is that there have been innumerable attempts to reconcile the Homeric Geography, some of these have been plausible, some arbitrary, others merely reflecting the views of the author own question but none succeeding absolutely. Donnelly’s own conclusions are made plain in the text and his indefatigable mode of building upon premises or what is now regarded as a systems model is shown at its best. To anticipate a little, his suggestion which would have been likely to be ill-received by Homeric scholars that the poem belonged to an earlier framework is not entirely improbable as it might be considered, for Sir Arthur Evans who in another two decades was destined to uncover Minoan civilization, suggested that the Homeric poems might well have been based upon similar chronicles obtained from this source. Gladstone as well as Donnelly knew of Schliemann’s excavations both at Troy and on the Greek mainland these must have sustained an instinctive intuition that the Greeks had an older and more ancient background than was ever conceived at the time. It would be interesting to have know what would have been the reaction of these two both in their own manner very learned gentlemen had settlements such as that of Lerna could have been excavated and dated by modern methods to the 6^th millenium (i.e. 6,000 BC-4,000BC) Naturally Donnelly considered this to have been Atlantis, but possibly Gladstone was more cautious and would have settled for Minoan Crete like many other exponents have done, had he known of its existence. In the second part of this letter Donnelly requests the Prime Minister to let the British Navy undertake an Expedition in the Atlantic where he was firmly convinced the site of Atlantis was situated."

Webmaster Note- We must see that Donnelly had some 20 years earlier made a request of this nature to Abe Lincoln but that Lincoln was assassinated before this could go forward.

Hastings, Minnesota U.S.A. March 25^th 1882

The Rt. Hon. W. E. Gladstone

Dear Sir,

I have read your valued letter of the 11^th inst. I did not expect anything but a formal acknowledgement of the receipt of my book "Atlantis" and I am profoundly grateful that in the midst of your vast labors and with the cares of an Empire on your shoulders, a load (as Wolsey says) "to sink a navy" you could find the time not only to express your satisfaction with my work, but to furnish me with a most curious fact illustrative of the vast sweep of time covered by human tradition.

In my book ( page 292) I showed that the north and west of Europe was better known in Greece before the decline of Phoenician influence than they were in a later period of Greek History. I would call your attention to what I say in the last paragraph on page 298, as to Homer. Would not the curious fact to which you allude (that Homer believed the north of Europe to be covered with water) tend to throw the origin of the Homeric writings even further back into time than this date fixed by yourself in "Homer’s Place in History".

" Suppose our present civilization to be overwhelmed and lost and a thousand years from now, say in Australia or Peru, one finds the fragments of an English library and translates the Illiad, a Macbeth into the tongue of the time, apply them to local characters or events and they thereby started on their travels to immortality stamped by a genius vastly higher than anything around them. If the Homeric writings have come down to us through 3000 years of alternate barbarism and civilization, why have they not descended through 3000 years or more to the Greeks.

This is of course guessing but guessing upon a greatly interesting subject and one which you have already illuminated. Certainly it is, that the writings of Homer manifest a knowledge of western Europe and associated with it, not known to the Greeks in what we call the Homeric age and that this knowledge was drawn from a very remote past as indicated by the fact to which you allude, that Homer knew of the north of Europe as it was when probably only more elevated portions stood above the sea. "

"Pardon me if I presume upon your kindness to make you a suggestion upon a different subject.

You have it in your power with no trouble to yourself and little cost to the English Government to throw perhaps a vast flood of light upon the human race, by simply sending out one of your idle war vessels to complete the work of H. M. S. Challenger by making accurate soundings of the Dolphin Ridge by many supposed to be lost Atlantis. Plato gives (see p.17 of my book) the exact size in stadia of the great plain of Atlantis, its length and its breadth. If a series of soundings should establish that that portion if "the Dolphin Ridge" south of the Azores (which were the mountains to the north) was an oval plain of the size and the shape described by Plato, the conclusion would be inevitable that Atlantis was a reality and that Plato had narrated sober history, and that too, the oldest history in the world. The whole record of the prehistoric part of the human race with all its ethnology and theology ad archaeology would have to be reconstructed and rewritten.

The initiation of such a work properly belongs to one who has done so much work to enlighten the mind, free the hands and widen the opportunities of mankind." (Webmaster underlined)

" Our government would, without a doubt follow your example and send a ship to aid in the soundings but it is just now to profoundly absorbed in the great question whether stalwarts or half breeds shall fill the custom houses offices to take the initiative in such a work.

With the very highest regards, Very Truly Yours,

Ignatius Donnelly."

Gladstone according to a note attached to Donnelly’s letter was apparently reluctant to act on merely literary evidence but the circumstances that either he or his secretary noted Sir Wyville Thomson’s name and the Challenger volumes suggests that it was intended to investigate Donnelly’s plan in depth and it is very probable we shall find a letter amongst the Challenger papers or the private papers of Sir Wyville Thomson which are probably still available a letter from Gladstone. As Egerton Sykes has recorded it seems that an actual proposal was put before the Cabinet. Both Donnelly and the Prime Minister were naïve of course. Nearly a hundred years of soundings much of it with far superior equipment than ever thought of in the period of Donnelly and Gladstone have exposed the contours of the Mid-Atlantic ridge in detail and indicated the complexity of the problem. It is interesting to note however that both Malaise and Zhirov allude to sites which the bathymetrical evidence hints could be Plato’s plain." Editor E. Sykes

Factoid --In 1972 Egerton Sykes and Young sponsored a conference about Cosmic Disaster Hoerbiger Theory’s.

Webmaster’s Note- It was the above subject that was taken up by Otto Muck some 65 years later who was armed with a lot more information about the oceans bottom then when Donnelly had access to oceanographic information. It was about this time of 1948 that Egerton Sykes saw the value of Muck’s book as unusual when compared to other Atlantis books for the mass public to review at the time i.e. 1947-1953. Sykes did not review Muck’s book until some time later in the Journals, and Sykes did not completely agree with Muck’s work yet he did feel the book should be included as a main source in every Atlantis library outside of Donnelly’s works. Sykes felt that the asteroid work of Muck’s was good, but a little flawed due to the Hoerbiger model had not been more introduced into Muck’s own work i.e. a Planetoid instead of just an Asteroid from some fallen prehistoric moon. Our site feels neither indication is a wrong assumption and that both in today’s science has now become extremely plausible within the model of a more dynamic universe then previously thought.

Art, Sign and Script, By E. Sykes or L.M. Young (1972 ends)

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