WHY is this book written? is the most pertinent question asked an author at the outset of composition. It is echoed and re-echoed by critic and reader upon its publication. It certainly appears to be a fair question whenever, the subjects seem so much out of the route of ordinary in formation, as the present volume.

The scattered records of the Past, within the historical period, would apparently yield scarcely enough material to make a short magazine article of any interest, to say nothing of swelling in size, to the dignity of a book.

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It is now conceded, however, by our wisest scientists, that every configuration and corresponding circumstance points to the possibility of the existence of an island continent in the neighborhood, if not directly over the great West Indian Archipelago, just as the whole configuration of the North American Continent tells the story of the inland sea that broke through its barriers at the Thousand Islands in the St. Lawrence river, and hurling itself over Niagara Falls, left the habitable valley of the Mississippi, as a legacy to man for future settlement.

The sacred writings of all nations concur in the same declaration and statement of disaster to some portion of the earth, most generally including all. In a late issue of Mind, appears an article headed: "A Monument to Atlantis," which says : "A notable discovery of more than ordinary interest for historians, especially those who have a leaning toward antiquities, has lately been made by the well-known archaeologist, Augustus Le Plongeon. This discovery should particularly at tract the attention of Americans, since it enables them to lay claim to one of the most important monuments of ancient times. The edifice in question is the Pyramid of Xochicalo, standing 5,396 feet above the level of the sea, and situated to the south-southwest of Cuernavaca, 60 miles from the City of Mexico. For more than a century the pyramid has been occasionally visited by distinguished travelers, including the learned Humboldt; but none succeeded in discovering the purpose for which the monument had been erected, nor in deciphering the mysterious inscriptions on its sides.

As far back as 1886, Dr. Le Plongeon published his alphabetic key to the Maya hieroglyphs, comparing this with the ancient Egyptian hieratic alphabet. He has now found that the signs on the Pyramid of Xochicalo are both Maya and Egyptian ; and a careful study of these decorative inscriptions has made it plain to him that the pyramid was a monumental structure erected to commemorate the submergence and destruction of the great Land of Mu (Plato's Atlantis), together with its population of 64,000,000 of human beings, about 11,500 years ago.

Dr. Le Plongeon, in his remarkable work, "Queen Moo and the Egyptian Sphinx," gives four Maya accounts of the same cataclysm. This, then, is the fifth, and, in his own opinion, the most important of all the known records in Maya language of the appalling event that gave rise to the story of a universal Deluge that is found in the sacred books of the Jews, the Christians and the Mohammedans.

These records, on stone, on sun-dried bricks, on papyrus, all tell the same story. The little we know of the Aztecs is also confirmatory of the same fact. Whence came the people of South America, with their advanced civilization and traditions of the Past? What mighty people built the great cities and temples of the now forest-covered cities of Yucatan and Central America, with their carved glyphs, and correspondences to the hieroglyphs of the Valley of the Nile and the East Indian entablatures; and moreover, on al most precisely similar styles of architecture to those of Egypt and India.

Is it reasonable to sup pose there was no common bond of fellowship between all these? The Ancient Egyptian ideas have dominated the world down to the present day. Instead of a mummy-case, we use a coffin for our dead. The idea is the same the de parted ghost was to be saved the trouble of making a new body, perhaps at short notice, at the great day of the resurrection. The trinity in unity of God, now universally received, was an Egyptian idea, and the same is wrought into the stone tablets which La Plongeon and his amiable wife have unearthed in the forests of the Maias and Quiches.

If the nation, of which these are but the feeble remnants, had not disappeared by some cataclysmal climax we must certainly have had some later, historical data. As the mind of the present generation is more largely than ever, desirous of Truth, the idea of Astral presentation and perception may not be without its weight, especially as the books of Wisdom of the Past declare, that automatic books of record are kept of all deeds and manifestation, upon the earth.