ROMANCE OF ROMANCES

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 74, 18 September 1911, Page 7

ROMANCE OF ROMANCES

' ■■' A'LOST CONTINENT. 'Millions of years ago an old continent ealled'testnuria' existed where now rolls the Pacific Ocean. Such at least is the firm conviction of. Mr. Clement Wragge, formerly tje.y«*»ment meteorologist of Queensland. The disappearance of this continent he told a representative of ffilr Sydney Daily Telegraph, must he regarded as the romance of romances. How came this vast stretch of from the far south to the far north, to pass out of sight? M.\■Wragge assigns the ca.i<e to territorial convulsions evidently caused by a sudden tilt in ,the inclination of the 6/jving "to the accumulation of "ice anil' show j n ages past at the SoutlV.l'ole. 1 ' jlH'pbahly, he says, the inhabitants'of'wh'a't is now Mister Island were at work carving out those enormous' Images—some' of which are over 30ft high—and.detaching them from the ordinal \jftiarrie3' wlfen the catastrophe overtook' theiri. It has been customary t,p say t,haT fhe lCasfer Island monoliths vvni'iWfc'vfr femitln a mystery, but there is ho 1 Tfiy»tery io tll9.se who can read between the lines and draw accurate conclusifins."'';; '• ,'""'"'; ; .".' '''That inc. people of ancient Lcmuria (continues. Mr. Wruggc) were forced, in the vilst by,'to migrate from high'uoftTioi l h''latitudos. which in turn, owing to secular Variations in the earth's axis 1 , •lM'd'beconie plunged in an ice age, to.more southern regions, which in their tiini r f()FsTml],al : ' : V/;asoi)s became softer, warmer,'find'more' genial, also appears abundantly' rli'oyed. That migrations •also toyi* jr '-p}A'e'e''from the far north wastes', "eVeM 'from north-western highlands,"tln*dw4h''l s ortugal, Algeria, Egypt, Southern India, Ceylon, China, Japan, and Javcfj' thfough'the Philippine Islands, thence southwards and south-eastwards to Tonga, New Zealand, New Caledonia, Easter Island, and South America, is ' equally sure, for all over the regions indicated tliirsfc ancient people have left their monoliths and gravures from the quarries and on the rocks, and the course just indicated is known to archaeologists as the magalithie track. That Australia and New Zealand were once connected is sure. That New Zealand anil New Caledonia were also once linked tgoether is sure, and not only so, but that Australia and New Zealand were connected with Antarctica is certain. We have many observations to lead to this conclusion. For instance, the flora in Southern New Zealand and Southern' Tasmania is highly allied to that of Terra del .Fuego and South America, and the flora of Northern New Zealand is allied to that of Northern Australia and the Malay Archipelago. The wlioie subject is one of such interest, and opens ''up such a wide vista of thought, that it is quite impossible (0 do justice to it in the course of an ordinary newspaper interview." Some of the monoliths in. Tonga were discovered onlv in March last by Mr. Wragge himself. In his collection of photographs, that gentleman lias pictures of them, and also of the rock carvings in the Tongan Islands. New Zealand, and New Caledonia, and points to the similarity of the representations asevidence in support of I lie theory that those islands are part of what was once a continent.