Mrs. Bettesworth was eventually consulted--as indeed she always
was, on extraordinary occasions--and her interest in the MS. being
roused, she decided in its favour. Within a week of its publication,
however, it was suppressed by law; all the copies saving three
presentation ones to the author, which he successfully concealed, were
destroyed; Messrs. Bettesworth and Batley were put in the stocks on
Ludgate Hill and fined heavily, and he, Thomas Maitland, was ordered
to be arrested, flogged and imprisoned. "But," wrote Maitland, "I was not to be caught napping. My previous
adventures and hairbreadth escapes had rendered me unusually wary, and
perceiving a number of people, among whom were two or three sheriff's
officers, approaching my house, I at once interpreted their mission,
and climbing through a trap-door leading on to the roof of the
building, nimbly made my way to the end of the row, and slipping down
a waterpipe easily eluded my enemies. London, however, being now too
hot to hold me, I booked passage on board the _Peterkin_, a Thames
trading vessel of some eighty tons, and sailed for Boston. My flight
had been so hasty that I brought very little with me--nothing in fact
except the clothes I stood in--a stout winter suit of home-spun brown
cloth, a cloak, and a pair of good, strong leather leggings--a purse
of fifty sovereigns (all I had), a knife, pistol and two copies of my
precious book, the third copy, alas! I had left behind in my hurry." After giving a few unimportant details as to his life on board ship,
Maitland went on to say:--

"Owing to a succession of storms the _Peterkin_ was driven out of her
course, and after narrowly escaping being dashed to pieces on the
Florida reefs, Lat. 24-1/2° N., Long. 82° W., we ran ashore with the
loss of only two lives--the second mate and cabin boy--on the Isthmus
of Yucatan, close to the estuary of a river. [1] Here we were forced to
spend nearly a year, during which time I made several journeys of
exploration into the interior of the continent. In the course of one
of my rambles amid a dense mass of tropical foliage, I suddenly found
myself face to face with a gigantic stone Sphinx, which I at once
recognized and identified. It was Tat-Nuada, an Atlantean deity,
elaborately described in one of the burned books. Much excited, I set
to work, and, after clearing the base of the idol of fungi and other
vegetable growth adhering to it, discovered a superscription in
Atlantean dialect to the effect that the image had been set up there
by one Hullir--to commemorate the destruction of Atlantis, of which
catastrophe Hullir believed himself and his family, _i.e._ his wife
Ozilmeave and daughters, Taramoo and Nikétoth, and the crew of his
yacht, the _Chaac-molré_ (ten in number), the sole survivors. "Here, then, to my unutterable joy, was strong corroborative evidence
of the great disaster narrated in detail in the manuscripts I had
found in Inisturk Island. The existence of Atlantis was now thoroughly
substantiated. On all sides of me I stumbled across further evidences
of these early settlers. Here, standing in bold outline on a slight
eminence, was a stone edifice adorned with symbolical carvings of
eggs, harps, mastodons, triangles, and numerous other objects, all of
which were capable of interpretation, and indicated that the building
was a temple to some god. "I was much struck by the extraordinary similarity in many of the
things I saw--notably in the sphinx, idols and symbols--to many I had
seen in Egypt, and to some extent in Ireland, and I at once set to
work to draw up a careful analogy between the languages of those
countries. "The word Banchicheisi[2] I found to contain the Celtic ban, a barrow;
and Coptic isi, plenty; whilst I recognized in the words Coulmenes,[3]
the Celtic Coul, a man's name, _i.e._ Finn, son of Coul; in
Thottirnanoge, the Coptic Thoth, _i.e._ name of ancient Egyptian
deity, and Erse Tirnanoge, the name of the wife of Oisin, the last of
the Feni; in Chaac-molrée[4] the Coptic deity, ré; in Ozilmeave,[5]
the Celtic Meave, a girl's name; in Taramoo,[6] the Celtic Tara, a
girl's name; and in Nikétoth,[7] toth, the Erse technical form of
feminine gender; and comparing the alphabets I traced a very striking
likeness between the Atlantean--

"[Atlantean: a] (a) and the Gaelic or Erse [Erse: A]
[Atlantean: B] (B) and the Coptic [Coptic: B]
[Atlantean: d] (d) and Erse [Erse: D]
[Atlantean: g] (g) and Erse [Erse: g]
[Atlantean: T] (T) and Coptic [Coptic: T]

"and many of the other letters. To the Atlantean

"[Atlantean: C, O, E, Z][8]

"I could, however, find no likeness. "From all these similarities, _i.e._ in architecture, symbols,
letters, and words, I could come to no other conclusion than that
there was some strong connecting link between Atlantis and ancient
Ireland and Egypt. "Assuredly this great link could not have been merely due to stray
survivors of the great catastrophe! Was it not much more probable that
the earliest inhabitants of Ireland and Egypt had originally migrated
from Atlantis, carrying its language, and ways and customs with them? Moreover, since the Atlanteans were so deeply versed in magic and
everything appertaining to the occult, this migration would account
for the mysticism that has always been so closely associated with
Egypt and Ireland, and for the psychic faculty so strongly observable
in the inhabitants of these two countries. "I was highly satisfied--I had proved much and my discoveries had
upset many of the theories advanced by the modern sages. I could now
positively assert that the wisdom of the world came not from the East
but from the West. It was to the golden West--to Banchicheisi, capital
of Atlantis, that humanity owed its knowledge of the sciences and
arts, and of all things good and evil. Eden, if Eden existed at all,
was not in Asia, it was in Atlantis; and the Deluge, that is recorded
in the Hebrew Bible, and is traditional in the histories of nearly
every tribe and nation, was none other than the mighty inrush of the
ocean over Atlantis, due to some abnormal submarine earthquake. "Of what eventually became of the Atlanteans whose relics I had so
opportunely alighted upon, I could only surmise. "The last record I found was on a tablet set up by Nikétoth. On this
she spoke of the death of Hullir and Ozilmeave, of the inter-marriage
of the crew of the _Chaac-molré_ with native women; of the consequent
growth of the colony; and of her determination to leave it, and,
accompanied by a chosen few, to push her way further inland. [9]

"The anxiety of my comrades to leave the continent, perforce put an
end to my explorations, and in the beginning of the year 1692--exactly
ten months after our landing--the _Peterkin_ was refloated. "This time nothing happened to impede our progress, and in April of
the same year, we sighted Boston. Here I remained for some months,
making many new friends, and studying magic and sorcery.