No. XXXIII.

OF THE SITUATION OF THE TERRESTRIAL PARADISE.

THE speculations of Columbus on the situation of the terrestrial paradise, extravagant as they may appear, were such as have occupied many grave and learned men. A slight notice of their opinions on this curious subject may be acceptable to the general reader, and may take from the apparent wildness of the ideas expressed by Columbus.

The world has ever been inquisitive as to the abode of our first parents, described in such engaging colours in holy writ; and indeed mankind have always been prone to picture some such place of perfect felicity, where the imagination, disappointed in the coarse realities of life, might revel in an elysium of its own creation. It is an idea not confined to our religion, but is found in the rude creeds of the most savage nations; and it prevailed generally among the ancients. The speculations concerning the situation of the garden of Eden, resemble those of the Greeks concerning the garden of the Hesperides; that region of delight, which they for ever placed at the most remote verge of the known world, which their poets embellished with all the charms of fiction, after which they were continually longing, and which they could never find. At one time it was in the Grand Oasis of Arabia. The exhausted travellers, after traversing the parched and sultry desert, hailed this verdant spot with rapture; they refreshed themselves under its shady bowers, and beside its cooling streams, as the crew of a tempest-tost vessel repose on the shores of some green island in the deep; and from its being thus isolated amidst an ocean of sand,

they gave it the name of the Island of the Blessed. As geographical knowledge increased, the situation of the Hesperian garden was continually removed to a greater distance. It was transferred to the borders of the great Syrte, in the neighbourhood of mount Atlas. Here, after traversing the frightful deserts of Barca, the traveller found himself in an embowered country, watered by rivulets and gushing fountains. The oranges and citrons transported hence to Greece, where they were as yet unknown, delighted the Athenians by their golden beauty and delicious flavour, and they thought none but the garden of the Hesperides could produce such glorious fruits. In this way the happy region of the ancients was transported from place to place, still in the remote and obscure extremity of the world, until it was placed in the Canaries, thence called the Fortunate or the Hesperian islands. Here it remained, because discovery advanced no farther, and because these islands were so distant, and so little known, as to allow full latitude to the fictions of the poet*.

In like manner the situation of the terrestrial paradise, or garden of Eden, was long a subject of earnest inquiry and curious disputation among zealous Christians, and occupied the laborious attention of the most learned theologians. Some placed it in Palestine or the holy land; others in Mesopotamia, in that rich and beautiful tract of country embraced by the wanderings of the Tigris and the Euphrates; others in Armenia, in a valley surrounded by precipitous and inaccessible mountains, and imagined that Enoch and Elijah were transported thither out of the sight of mortals, to live in a state of terrestrial bliss, until the second coming of our Saviour. There were others who gave it

*Gosselin, Recherches sur la Geog. des Anciens, T. 1.

situations widely remote, such as in the Trapoban of the ancients, at present known as the island of Ceylon; or in the island of Sumatra; or in the Fortunate or Canary islands; or in one of the islands of Sunda; or in some favoured spot under the equinoctial line.

Great difficulty was encountered by these speculators to reconcile the allotted place with the description given in Genesis of the garden of Eden; particularly of the great fountain which watered it, and which afterwards divided itself into four rivers, the Pison or Phison, the Gehon, the Euphrates, and the Heddekel. To supply these streams, the pious disputants have done little less than effect miracles, Those who were in favour of the holy land supposed that the Jordan was the great river which afterwards divided itself into the Phison, Gehon, Tigris and Euphrates, but that the sands have choked up the ancient beds by which these streams were supplied. That originally the Phison traversed Arabia Deserta and Arabia Felix, from whence it pursued its course to the gulf of Persia; that the Gehon bathed northern or stony Arabia and fell into the Arabian gulf or Red sea; that the Euphrates and the Tigris passed by Eden to Assyria and Chaldea, from whence they discharged themselves into the Persian gulf.

T

By most of the early commentators the river Gehon is supposed to be the Nile. The source of this river was unknown, but was evidently far distant from those of the Tigris and the Euphrates. This difficulty, however, was ingeniously overcome, by giving it a subterranean course of some hundreds of leagues from the common fountain, until it issued forth to daylight in Abyssinia*. In like manner, subterranean courses were given to the Tigris and the En

* Feyjoo, Theatro Critico, Lib. 7, § II,

phrates, passing under the Red sea, until they sprang forth in Armenia, as if just issuing from one common source. So also those who placed the terrestrial paradise in islands, supposed that the rivers which issued from it, and formed those heretofore named, either traversed the surface of the sea, as fresh water, by its greater lightness, may float above the salt, or that they flowed through deep veins and channels of the earth, as the fountain of Arethusa was said to sink into the ground in Greece, and rise in the island of Sicily, while the river Alpheus pursuing it, but with less perseverance, rose somewhat short of it in the sea.

Some, to sweep away all difficulties, contended that the deluge had destroyed the garden of Eden, and altered the whole face of the earth, so that the rivers had changed their beds, and had taken different directions from those mentioned in Genesis; others, however, amongst whom was St. Augustine, a host within himself, maintained that the terrestrial paradise still existed, with its original beauty and delights, but that it was inaccessible to mortals, being on the summit of a mountain of stupendous height, reaching into the third region of the air, and approaching the moon, being thus protected by its elevation from the ravages of the deluge*.

By some this mountain was placed under the equinoctial line; or under that band of the heavens metaphorically called by the ancients the table of the sunt, comprising the space between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, beyond which the sun never passed in his annual course. Here would reign a uniformity of nights and days and seasons, and the elevation of the mountain would raise it above the heats and storms of the lower regions. Others transported

* St. Augustin, L. 9, C. 2. Sup. Genesis.

† Herodot. L. 3. Virg. Georg. 1, Pomp. Mela, L. 3, C. 10.

the garden beyond the equinoctial line and placed it in the southern hemisphere; supposing that the torrid zone might be the flaming sword appointed to defend its entrance against mortals. They had a fanciful train of argument to support their theory. They observed that the terrestrial paradise must be in the noblest and happiest part of the globe; that part must be under the noblest part of the heavens: as the merits of a place do not so much depend upon the virtues of the earth, as upon the happy influences of the stars, and the favourable and benign aspect of the heavens. Now, according to philosophers, the world was divided into two hemispheres. The southern they considered the head, and the northern the feet, or under part. The right hand the east, from whence commenced the movement of the primum mobile, and the left the west, toward which it moved. This supposed, they observed that it was manifest that as the head of all things natural and artificial, is always the best and noblest part, governing the other parts of the body, so the south being the head of the earth, ought to be superior and nobler than either east, or west, or north; and in accordance with this, they cited the opinion of various philosophers among the ancients, as well as of the Bramins of Ethiopia, and more especially that of Ptolemy, that the stars of the southern hemisphere were larger, more resplendent, more perfect, and of course of greater virtue and efficacy than those of the northern an error universally prevalent until disproved by modern discovery. Hence they concluded that in this southern hemisphere, in this head of the earth, under this purer and brighter sky, and these more potent and benignant stars, was placed the terrestrial paradise.

Various ideas were entertained as to the magnitude of this blissful region. As Adam and all his progeny were to have lived there, had he not sinned, and as there would