“Effendi, your terumbil is ready.” Thus did a young Arab inform me that the automobile which was to take us to Babylon was at the door of the Carmelite monastery.

Barely have a few words so thrilled me as did these then pronounced by the bronze-visaged son of the desert. They meant so much to me—far more than the simple words would seem to imply. They meant that we were at last near the final objective of our long and eventful journey; that, in a few hours, we should be contemplating the world-famed ruins of Babylon; that in, the short journey from the romantic capital of Harun-al-Rashid to the historic city of Nebuchadnezzar we should traverse a land which has long been celebrated in story and legend as the cradle of our race.

When we attempted to cross the swaying pontoon bridge which separates Bagdad proper from its old suburb on the right bank of the Tigris, we found our passage blocked for a while by the heterogeneous crowd of men and women and the long train of burdened donkeys and camels that were headed for the shops and the bazaars of the old capital of the Caliphs. But we welcomed this delay as it gave us an opportunity to study a scene which, during our wanderings along the river front of the city, had always possessed for us a special fascination.

Here were assembled the strange and varied craft for which the Tigris is so noted. Among them was the steam side-wheeler which brings freight and passengers from the port of Basra on the Shat-al-Arab. There were also tugs and barges and lighters of other varieties of modern craft familiar to people of the West. Scattered among these were numerous mahailas, those primitive and picturesque boats so much used by the Arabs in the navigable parts of the Tigris and Euphrates. With their pointed prows, high masts, and lateen sails, they are not unlike the dahabiyehs of the Nile or simplified forms of the fast-sailing felucca and xebec once so much used by the pirates of Barbary. Alongside of them were countless specimens of that long, canoe-shaped boat called by the Arabs the bellum—which in the narrow canals in and around Basra serves the same purpose as the gondola in Venice. The bellum, to judge from certain bas-reliefs found among the ruins of Nimroud, is but a slight modification of the type of boat which Sennacherib employed in his fleet during his celebrated campaign against the Elamits. But a far more singular craft than any of those mentioned is the kufa. Its frame is woven of willows or the split branches of the date palm and, like the Ark of Noah, is “pitched within and without with pitch” which is procured from the hot, bitumen springs of Hit, on the Euphrates. It is circular in form and looks like a large cauldron with its brim turned inwards. Their great number at Bagdad and the way which they are made to rotate among the other boats are always sure to attract attention. They are used as ferryboats in crossing the river and for carrying freight and passengers to and from the city and the adjoining country. Herodotus tells us that, after the city itself, these curious craft surprised him more than anything that he saw in Babylon. In form and size they are similar to the coracle in which St. Brendan is said to have made his famous voyage from Ireland to America, long centuries before Columbus “to Castile and Leon gave a New World.”

But few keleks are seen among the numberless boats that dot the Tigris at Bagdad. The reason is simple. As soon as they arrive from Mosul and Diarbeker their wooden frameworks are sold for fuel, for which they fetch a good price, while the deflated skins are returned to the places whence they came to be again used in the construction of other keleks.

Nowhere in the world can one see so great a variety of river crafts as at Bagdad, or styles of vessels which have remained unchanged for so many thousands of years. For here one finds everything from the raftlike slow-floating kelek to the swift, surface-skimming glisseur which, with a powerful engine, is capable of making a speed of more than forty miles an hour. The kelek and the kufa represent the high-water mark of the shipwright’s achievements two thousand years before our era, while the glisseur is but one of the many triumphs of the marine engineers of the twentieth century of the era in which we live. Forty centuries separate the two creations and yet they are both seen here side by side—one typifying the changeless East and the other the ever-progressive West.

After the congested traffic on the bridge had diminished sufficiently to allow us to pass, we took the stage road that leads to Hillah and Babylon. There was nothing to detain us in West Bagdad for of the old Round City of Mansur not a vestige is now visible. Many travelers make a detour to get a near view of the noted Kazimayn mosque but, as the fanatical Shiahs do not allow a Christian to enter this sacred shrine, I was satisfied with the view I had had of it through my field glass from the summit of the lofty old minaret of Souk-El-Ghazl.

Neither did we go to see that other lion on the western bank of the Tigris—the much lauded tomb of Zobeide, who occupies so conspicuous a place in Thousand and One Nights and in many Arabian chronicles. With the renowned Arabian queens Zenobia and the Queen of Sheba, Zobeide will always live in story and legend as one of the most prominent figures of the East. According to an Eastern tradition, she shares with the mythical Sultana Scheherazade the honor of having composed those fascinating tales known as “The Arabian Nights.” We did not visit the crumbling monument which is said to contain her tomb, for the simple reason that it has been proved beyond doubt that this was never the last resting place of Harun-al-Rashid’s favorite wife and was never considered to be so until nearly nine hundred years after her death.

A few short hours after leaving the city of the Caliphs we were in the heart of the broad alluvial plain of Babylonia. But there was little to attract our attention except the countless mounds that dotted the broad expanse of level land and covered all that remained of once flourishing towns and cities. With the exception of a few palms here and there along some old irrigating canal this extensive region was almost as treeless as the desert sections of northern Mesopotamia. Outside of an occasional reed hut or black tent—the humble homes of Bedouin Arabs—we saw but few human habitations in a land that during thousands of years was as thickly populated and as carefully cultivated as Holland or the valley of the Rhine.

Once we met a small caravan of pilgrims coming from far-distant Mecca and Medina. Although travel worn by their long journey through the burning sands of Arabia they seemed, nevertheless, to be a very joyous company. They were happy in the thought of having complied with the precept of the Koran which requires that every one of the Faithful shall, if at all possible, make a pilgrimage, at least once in his lifetime, to the venerated shrines which enclose the Kaaba and the tomb of the Prophet. Even

seemed to enter into the spirit of their cheerful and godly riders.

Among the green-turbaned hadjis I observed two whose means enabled them to indulge in the luxury of genuine Arabian steeds. After the delightful experience I had had with a pure-blooded Arabian horse when traveling in the East many years ago, I have never been able to pass one of these noble animals without scrutinizing it as closely as I would a masterpiece of Raphael or Murillo. I do not know whether or not these two horses had made the long journey to Mecca and return—a distance of nearly fifteen hundred miles—but if they did, they failed to show it, for they seemed as lively and as vigorous as if they had been on the road but a few days. But this is one of the characteristics of the true Arabian horse—its remarkable powers of endurance, even when forced to travel long distances without food or water.[454] Judging from their delicate forms, their well-fashioned heads, their large beautiful eyes, their agile and supple movements, the two steeds in question must have been bred from one or two of the five pure-blooded races of horses for which, from time immemorial, Arabia has been so celebrated.[455]

According to an Arabian legend, when God wished to create the horse He called the South Wind to Him and said, “I wish to take from thy bosom a new being. Condense thyself by depriving thyself of thy fluidity.” The wind obeyed. The Lord then took a handful of that element, now become malleable, breathed upon it and the horse was born. “You will be for man,” the Lord then said, “a source of happiness and riches and he will render himself illustrious by riding you.”

It is said that “the happiest events in the life of a Bedouin are the births of a she-camel, of a son, and of a she-foal.” And so highly does the Arab value his young colts, as well as his young camels, that he cares for them as children and “the nearer on the social ladder he stands to the real Bedouin” the higher rises his love for his horse. Indeed, to judge by his actions at times, one would think that he prefers his horse to his son. For when the camels are milked in the evening the colts receive their regular supply of the lacteal fluid before the children of the family. Not only this, but the true Arab puts the care of his horse before his own ease. In the desert there is a saying that “work which does not belittle a man is for his horse, for his brother and for his guest.” Another saying among the Bedouins is that “Allah has three great gifts for man—a good horse, a good wife and a good blade.” Similar to this is the adage that “the greatest blessings are a wise wife and a fruitful mare.”

How well the Bedouin is rewarded for his affectionate care of his horse is a common theme of the stories and songs of the desert. For the prized animal which occasionally exhibits almost human intelligence fully reciprocates his master’s affection and serves him in danger and out of danger with a loyalty that is proverbial and with an unswerving devotion that never falters as long as strength and life endure.

But one cannot speak of the Arab’s horse without also saying something of his intimate associate—the camel. So indispensable is the camel to the Bedouin that, without it, it would be almost impossible for him to continue his nomad life. For the hair of the animal supplies him with clothing and tents while its milk is his principal article of food. Hence, the significant proverb “God created the camel for the Arab and the Arab for the camel.” Hence, also, the peculiar custom of speaking of the camel as a “person.” Thus an Arab when enumerating his flocks and herds will speak of so many “head” of sheep or cattle, but when counting his camels will speak of them as so many “persons.”

According to a Bedouin legend, the camel and the date were fashioned by Allah from the same clay from which Adam was formed. The same legend declares that they were found with our first parents in the Garden of Eden and that they will accompany man to the world beyond the tomb. When young, the camel, like the colt, is regarded as a member of the family. Like its companion, the colt, it is fondled as a child and always treated with the most unremitting care. And so important a position does it occupy in the life of the family and the clan in Arabia, that the poets of the desert have from time immemorial vied with one another in seeking suitable epithets for their inseparable servant and associate. The number of these epithets, describing and glorifying the camel, is no less than six hundred, while the distinguished French traveler Chardin assures us that it is fully a thousand.

And well may the Arab sing the praises of the animal to which he owes so much, for it is to the patient, frugal, and laborious camel that he, in great measure, owes his proud, uninterrupted independence during the long ages of his country’s history. For, “without the camel, he must have long since bowed his neck to a foreign yoke, sharing the fate of those despised felahin who guide or draw the plow on the banks of the Nile and the Orontes.”[456]

But while the much-praised camel is to the Arab fully as useful as the horse—in many respects far more indispensable—he has, contrary to general opinion, neither the docility nor the intelligence of the horse and, notwithstanding all the care his master may have lavished upon him, shows no interest in him whatever. Besides this, he is vindictive to a degree, and that sooner or later he will seek revenge for some real or fancied injury is so well known that the camel driver is always on his guard against its malice and fury.

Palgrave, the adventurous explorer of central and eastern Arabia, who had a rare opportunity of studying “the ship of the desert” in his desert home, writes:

Shortly after meeting the caravan from Mecca and Medina, we overtook one going in the opposite direction. This was composed of pilgrims on their way to the sacred shrines of Nejef and Kerbela—the holy cities of the Shiites. A sorrier and more mournful crowd could not easily be imagined. It was composed of Persian Shiites who were convoying their dead to Kerbela and Nejef for burial. Among the departed were some but recently deceased, while others had been dead for years and their moldering remains had been exhumed for final interment in the sacred ground in and around Kerbela and Nejef. There were no sumptuous funeral cars for transporting this gruesome freight. Only jades and donkeys and mules, all worn out by their long journey through the sandy desert. Nor were there any costly caskets to enclose the remains of the dead. Far from it. Some were wrapped in reeds and rugs while others were packed in bags and baskets. In this condition they were slung from the backs of the jaded pack animals which were conducted by friends or servants of the deceased.

In Nejef are preserved the ashes of Ali, the husband of Fatima, daughter of the Prophet of Mecca, while in the mosque of Kerbela is the last resting place of his son, Husein. By his followers Ali was considered the first legitimate Caliph and his sons Hasan and Husein have ever since their tragic death been venerated as martyrs. It was the dispute about the first lawful Caliph that occasioned the great schism which divides the Moslem world into two sects: the Shiites, who reject the first three Caliphs—Abu-Bekr, Omar, and Othman—as usurpers; and the Sunnites, who recognize Ali as well as the three Caliphs named, while they regard the Shiites as “forsakers of the truth.” The Shiites include the Persians, besides whom they have a large representation among the Mohammedans of India.

It is the ardent desire of every devout Shiite to be buried either in Nejef or Kerbela, for the sacred soil of these places, so he firmly believes, assures him of paradise. There is a cherished tradition among the Shiites that Ali will be the first to rise on the day of the general resurrection and that all who are interred in Nejef will rise with him to a life of immortality and happiness.

This accounts for the countless thousands that are every year interred in Nejef and Kerbela. The cost of the burial permits at these two places is said to amount to nearly a million dollars a year, while the number of pilgrims from Persia alone, who annually visit the shrines of Ali and Husein is estimated at no less than sixty thousand souls. In a preceding chapter we have seen that the pilgrims—nearly all of whom are Sunnites—that yearly visit Medina and Mecca number fully two hundred thousand. Considering, however, the relative populations of Shiite and Sunnite countries, more pilgrims are found at the shrines of Ali and Husein than at those of the Prophet and the Kaaba.

But, although both the great Moslem sects recognize Mohammed as their prophet and have the greatest veneration for him, the most profound hatred separates one from the other. The Shiites regard the Sunnites as impure and detest them because of their association with Christians and Jews, something which the followers of Ali consider intolerable.

Unlike the Sunnites, the Shiites, especially those in the valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates, lead a retired life and studiously avoid relations with all except their coreligionists. Those of the well-to-do class are, when at home, continually engaged in religious ceremonies and conferences. On these occasions accounts are read of the tragic deaths of Ali and his sons. So moved are all present that they express their grief by sobs and lamentations. These reunions, which usually last two hours, take place for the men in apartments specially reserved for them and in the harem for the women. But the women are much more demonstrative in their sorrow than the men, for so moved are they by the recital of the cruel deaths of Ali and his sons that they utter piercing shrieks, strike their breasts, and, when carried away by their delirium, disfigure their faces with their finger nails.

But what is passing strange is that these ceremonies of mourning take place on such occasions of rejoicing as a wedding or the birth of a child. In a word, the Shiites are born, live, and die in the midst of tears and moans and lamentations. The wailing of the Jews in Jerusalem at the wall of the temple of their forefathers occurs but once a week, while the dolorous reunions of the Shiites are far more frequent. During the first ten days of the month of Moharrem and every day during the pilgrimage to Nejef and Kerbela they are obligatory.[458]

But it is not my purpose in this chapter to give more than a cursory glance at the present condition of Babylonia and its people. For, during my wanderings in this historic land, my thoughts were rather occupied with its myths and legends and, above all, with that interesting and persistent tradition which, from time immemorial, has here located the Garden of Eden—what the “Vulgate” calls the Paradise of Pleasure and what is frequently known as the Terrestrial Paradise.

Of the many interesting subjects treated of in the book of Genesis, few have received more attention from scholars and interpreters than that which relates to the Terrestrial Paradise. Even in the early days of Christianity men began to dispute about it. Some, among them Origen[459] and St. Ambrose, not to mention others, inclined to the opinion that the Genesiac account of the cradle of our race was to be interpreted allegorically. Others, however, like St. Jerome and St. Augustine,[460] maintained that the Scriptural narrative regarding the Garden of Eden was to be interpreted literally. Even at the present time Biblical students exhibit the same difference of opinion respecting the words of the Sacred Text which relate to the Garden of Paradise as was displayed by the writers and Fathers of the primitive Church. Some favor an allegorical interpretation of the much discussed narrative while others contend that we must adopt a literal interpretation. “So concrete,” they hold with St. Augustine, “is the description of the Terrestrial Paradise that one cannot allegorize it without doing violence to the text.”

The eminent Assyriologist, Frederick Delitzsch, in an elaborate study of this long vexed question, insists that “the Biblical record of the Garden of Eden contains no indication of being fabulous or extravagant, or enveloped in semi-obscurity. Neither need one hesitate as to the sense, nor is one, for lack of clearness, obliged to read between the lines. For the narrator the Garden of Eden, with its four rivers, the Phison, the Gehon, the Tigris and the Euphrates, is a manifest and well-known reality. He is in nowise obscure respecting the meaning of the names of the Phison and the Gehon. Not only does he know exactly their signification—as exactly as that of the Tigris and the Euphrates—but he wishes to instruct his readers concerning the subject. It is for this reason that he gives explanations and elucidations which his readers can control.”[461]

But, notwithstanding the explicitness of the author of the second chapter of Genesis, the localization of the Garden of Eden bristles with many and grave difficulties. Ever since the days of Philo Judæus, scholars have been seeking a solution of the problem, and, although they have written countless books on the subject, the actual site of the Terrestrial Paradise still remains a matter of uncertainty.

How diverse have been the views of learned men respecting the site of Paradise is evinced by the fact that they have located it almost everywhere on the earth, above the earth, and under the earth. Some, following the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, have contended that the home of the first parents was in the third heaven; others that it was in the fourth; others still that it was in the heaven of the moon, or in the middle region of the air, or in some hidden place far removed from the knowledge of mortals. Others again with a great display of erudition have attempted to prove that it was situated in Syria, or Palestine, or Arabia, or Persia, or Armenia, or Assyria, or India, or China, or Tartary. Still others, who were a little more specific in their speculations, placed the Garden of Eden on the banks of the Ganges, in the Canaries, or in Ceylon, or on the Mountains of the Moon, where the Nile was supposed to have its source. Hebron, Jerusalem, Damascus, and Babylon have each been considered as being on the identical spot where our first parents were created and where they fell from their high estate.

The Benedictine, Ralph Higden, who follows the opinion of some of the Fathers of the Church, tells us in his Polychronicon that the Terrestrial Paradise is in an inaccessible region in Eastern Asia. Gautier de Metz, in his Image du Monde, is in essential agreement with the learned Benedictine as to the location of the Garden of Eden. It is, he avers, surrounded by flames, and access to it through its single gate is precluded by an armed angel who is always on guard. Lambertus Floridus describes the primeval home of our race as an island in the Eastern ocean—Paradisus insula in oceano in oriente. But, like Gautier de Metz, he declares it to be inaccessible because it is surrounded by a wall of fire.

Peter Lombard, the famous Master of the Sentences, who is followed by other mediæval writers, teaches that Paradise is located on a very high mountain in Eastern Asia—so high that the waters of the Deluge, which rose above the summit of Ararat, submerged only its base.[462] Another author informs us that “Paradise is neither in heaven nor on earth.... It is forty fathoms higher than Noah’s flood was and it hangeth between heaven and earth wonderfully, as the Ruler of all things made it.... There is there neither hollow nor hill; nor is there frost nor snow, hail or rain, but there is fons vitæ, that is, the well of life.... There is there neither heat nor hunger, nor is there ever night, but always day. The sun there shines seven times brighter than on this earth. Therein dwell innumerable angels of God with the holy souls till doomsday.”[463]

Of similar import is the description of Paradise contained in an Anglo-Saxon poem—a translation of the “De Phœnice” of the Pseudo-Lactantius—in which the poet declares:

From the time of Indicopleustes, who flourished in the sixth century, to our own, travelers and explorers have sought for the Garden of Eden, and geographers have indicated on their maps the places they imagined it should occupy. Some were satisfied with a conjectural location, but others, basing their speculations on the data given in the second chapter of Genesis, were minded that the problem was so simple that it could be answered off-hand. They were quite like Hudibras who

In a letter purporting to have been written to the Emperor Manual Comnenus, the mythical king Prester John declares that Paradise is situated within three days’ journey of his own empire, but whether this empire is in Asia or Africa is not made clear.

Sir John Mandeville, the reputed author of a celebrated travel book, which, he assures us, was “proved for true” by the Pope’s councils, places Paradise “beyond the lands and isles and deserts of Prester John’s lordship.”...

Columbus, as we learn from his letters, thought he had found the site of the Garden of Eden in the northern part of South America. True, he was not aware that he had discovered a new continent. He was under the impression that he was on the east coast of Asia, the ocean-laved shores of far-off Cathay. He accepted as true one of the traditional beliefs which located Paradise in farther India, or yet more to the eastward and was fully persuaded that he had, in the Orinoco, discovered one of the rivers that watered Eden.

Writing to his Royal patrons, Ferdinand and Isabella, of the region at the headwaters of the Orinoco, he says:

But Columbus was not the only one to locate the original home of our race in South America. Only a few years ago a patriotic Bolivian scholar, Emeterio Villamil, maintained that the site of the Garden of Eden was on the eastern slope of the mighty Sorata, while the Argentine geologist, Dr. Ameghino, contended that the mother region of mankind was within the shadow of Monte Hermoso, in southern Argentina. There could be no doubt about it. For did he not here discover the skeleton of the first man? And did he not testify to the faith that was in him by giving to the Argentine Adam the imposing name of Tetraprothomo Argentinus?

According to M. Mayo, however, all those who would place humanity’s first hearthstone in Asia, or in Europe, or in America were entirely mistaken. In an ingenious study on “Les Secrets de Pyramides de Memphis”[466] he argues that the desert of Sahara embraces what was once the Garden of Eden. True, it is now a bleak and arid desert, but he believes it was once a land of marvelous beauty and fertility. There was a time, he avers, when it was watered by large rivers and meandering streams; when it was covered with rich verdure and luxurious vegetation; when it was densely populated and the happy home of a peaceful and prosperous people. A new reading of Genesis, in the light of certain hieroglyphical inscriptions of the twelfth dynasty regarding the pyramid of Cheops will, he assures us, solve the mystery that has so long enshrouded the famed monument of Gizeh and reveal the reason why all attempts hitherto made to localize the Paradise of Scripture have proved futile. The Nile, he will have it, formerly flowed through the Sahara where it divided into four branches, constituting the quadrifurcate river of Genesis. At this time the people of Egypt, who even then were a powerful and highly civilized nation, suffered from lack of water and cast about to increase their supply of this all-important element. They obtained it by deflecting the course of the Nile and directing it through their own country. By making a large cut or ditch through an elevation near Khartoum they appropriated to themselves the waters of the great reservoirs of equatorial Africa and shut off from their neighbors in the Sahara the only source of irrigation on which their country could depend. It was thus, according to this quixotic Frenchman, not God but man who closed Paradise and made entrance into it impossible by taking from it the water that gave it fecundity and life.

“Fudge,” vociferates Ignatius Donnelly. “Amen,” ejaculates Unger. Paradise according to these worthies was not situated in any of the existing continents, for its seat, as can be proved, was in the lost Atlantis. Accepting Plato’s account of the Atlantis, as given in the Timæus, as veritable history, the paradoxical Donnelly attempts to show that Atlantis was not only the Garden of Eden but also the only possible center of distribution for the various races which now people the Old and the New World. And more than this. Not only, he asseverates, “was it the original home of mankind but it was likewise the focus whence have eradiated all our cereals and most useful plants and fruits and all our domestic animals.”[467] Here, too, he claims, many of the most valuable inventions which ever blessed our race had their origin. In a word, if we are to believe this plausible author, Atlantis was the home of art, science, and literature and the people who inhabited it not only enjoyed all the peace and happiness of which the ancient poets speak as being the lot of the privileged mortals of the Golden Age but they were the prototypes of the gods, demi-gods, and heroes of a later and less fortunate period.

“Nonsense,” exclaim Dr. Warren, Count Saporta, and the German astronomer, Herr Kohl. Basing their opinions on certain forced interpretations of various ancient legends and traditions and on the results of scientific explorations of the regions within the Arctic Circle, these gentlemen reach the startling conclusion that the first home of our race was in the circumpolar North.

The investigations of botanists, they remind us, declare the singular, but as yet inexplicable fact, that “all the floral types and forms revealed in the oldest fossils in the earth, originated in the region of the North Pole and thence spread first over the northern and then over the southern hemisphere, proceeding from north to south.” The same may also be said of numerous and important representatives of the world’s fauna. Why then, they inquire, are we not justified in placing humanity’s birthplace where the animals and plants which serve man and on which he subsists and which have accompanied him on his migrations over the earth’s surface are known to have originated? “Only from the circumpolar regions of the North,” affirms Count Saporta, “could primitive humanity have radiated as from a center to spread into the several continents at once and to give rise to successive emigrations toward the south. This theory best agrees with the presumed march of the human races.”[468]

At the North Pole of the earth, therefore, “the sacred quarter of the world,” “the navel of the earth,” “the mesomphalos,” “the umbilicus orbis terrarum,” are we to look for the long lost Eden, for the cradle of mankind. There where the aurora borealis is seen in all its splendor, under a canopy formed by palpitating and wafting draperies, quivering curtains and shining streamers of primatic hues of varying intensity and matchless brilliancy our first parents spent the first happy days of their existence and there, amid a frozen desolation lie buried the “hearthstone of Humanity’s earliest and loveliest home.”[469]

But the views of those who have located Paradise in “the fairie North” have been no more satisfactory than the contentions of those who have placed it on the elevated plateau of the Andes, or on the top of a cloud-piercing mountain of farther India or beneath the shifting sands of the Sahara or in the fabled Atlantis or in some mythical Hyperborean land which has been ice bound for a million years or more. Far from it. So fascinating, however, is the subject that men of science still continue the quest of humanity’s original dwelling place and still elaborate theories respecting its location that are quite as fantastic as were those of the speculators and paradox mongers of the past. Thus, according to Hasse, it was in Prussia on the shores of the Baltic; Herder imagined it to have been in Cashmere; Livingstone sought it in equatorial Africa and hoped to find it at the headwaters of the Nile, if he could be fortunate enough to discover them. Daumer maintained that it was in Australia whence man emigrated to America and thence, by way of Behring’s Straits, to Asia and Europe.

The eminent anthropologist, Quaterfages de Bréau, is disposed to consider the lofty plateau of Pamir as the original hearthstone of mankind.[470] This is also the view of the distinguished Orientalist, François Lenormant, whose investigations have led him to believe that the four rivers—the Phison, the Gehon, the Tigris, and the Euphrates—which watered Gan-Eden, or Paradise, were what are now known as the Indus, the Oxus, the Tarin, and the Jaxartes.[471]

Here, too, curiously enough, on this “Roof of the world”; on this “central Boss of Asia,” is the spot where the puranas locate the holy Mount Meru, the primeval Aryan Paradise; the center, according to the traditions of the Parsees, whence radiated the first Aryan migrations, and one of the regions of the earth which even Mohammedan teaching has assigned as the cradle-land of our species.[472]

From the foregoing opinions entertained by divers authors the reader can infer how prominent a part wild conjecture, unbridled fancy, and love of learned paradox have played in the numerous investigations which at various times have been made with a view of determining the geographical seat of Paradise. And, be it remembered, allusion has been made to only a few of the opinions that have in times past been promulgated respecting humanity’s pristine home. Nearly a hundred different theories regarding the birthplace of our race have been advocated at one time or another, practically all of which are now discarded as highly fanciful or supremely ridiculous.

Must we, then, as many have done, look upon the Garden of Eden as a religious or a philosophic myth? Has modern research—especially research in the domain of the new science of Assyriology—done nothing toward clearing up the mystery which has so long enveloped the site of the Biblical Paradise, or are we forever to renounce all hope of even an approximate solution of the great enigma? Not at all. We can still say with the Florentine Poet, Leonardo Dati:

And leaving out of consideration the vagaries of certain transformists and polygenists and the lucubrations of certain noted paradoxers like those just referred to, it may be asserted of a truth that the general consensus of the highest and most trustworthy authorities is agreed in locating the cradle of humanity somewhere in that part of Asia which is embraced by the Tigris and the Euphrates.

There would, probably, never have been much doubt about this matter, at least on the part of Scriptural scholars, had it not been for the imperfect geographical knowledge of early Christian writers and for the errors that had been given currency by The Seventy in their version of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek. They made no mistake about the Tigris and the Euphrates, which were well known to them, but when it came to the Phison and the Gehon they went completely astray and gave to these two rivers an interpretation which was accepted without question by even the most learned Biblical exegetes for more than a thousand years. For, in their identification of the Phison with the Ganges and the Gehon with the Nile, they so confused all researches respecting the actual site of the Terrestrial Paradise that it was not until long centuries afterwards that students of the Genesiac narrative bethought themselves of making a more serious study of the Sacred Text.

Reading carefully the second chapter of Genesis they discovered that many had been misled by a misunderstanding of the eighth verse. There, according to the Vulgate, it is stated that “the Lord God planted a paradise of pleasure from the beginning.” But a careful examination of the Hebrew word, mid-quedem, which is here made to signify the beginning, should, they found, indicate space rather than time. The real sense of the words above quoted should, therefore, be: “The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden.” And they furthermore discovered that the word mid-quedem meant eastward from Palestine and not, as some had imagined, eastward from Babylonia.[473]

The site of Eden, it now seemed clear, should be sought for eastward of Palestine where the writer of the Genesiac narrative lived and somewhere between the well-known rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. This greatly reduced the area in which the Terrestrial Paradise was presumed to have been located. For, if the Biblical account of Eden was to be interpreted literally, it necessarily followed that it must have been placed somewhere in that peninsular tract of land which is included between the Tigris and the Euphrates and which extends from their sources—very near each other—in the highlands of Armenia to their confluence in the lowlands of Babylonia near the Persian Gulf.

Guided by these indications of the narrative of Genesis, the learned Benedictine, Dom Calmet, fancied that the seat of Paradise was in the rich plateau of Armenia where even to-day are found some of the most fertile valleys in the world. This opinion, it is avouched by the followers of the distinguished Benedictine, is corroborated by a popular tradition in Armenia which locates the Garden of Eden in the oasis of Ordubad, on the right bank of the Aras.[474]

The four rivers, according to Dom Calmet’s theory, which watered Paradise, are the Tigris and the Euphrates—whose sources are only an hour’s journey from each other—and the Phasis and Araxes mentioned by Pliny and Strabo. It is interesting to note that the sources of all four of these rivers are very near one another, but it is still more interesting to observe that the land which is watered by the Phasis and which is supposed, according to Calmet’s theory, to be the Hevilath of Genesis, “where gold groweth,” corresponds with the Colchis whither the Argonauts sailed in quest of the Golden Fleece.

An objection to this theory is that it does not harmonize with the words of Genesis which declare that the river which went out of Paradise “is divided into four heads,” that is, into four branches. The natural meaning of these words is that the four rivers mentioned in the Edenic narrative had one and the same source. But each river, as has been said, has its own distinct source. The only answer that the defenders of the theory have been able to give is one that is warranted by no known fact—namely that past revolutions of the earth’s surface have materially changed the topography of the original site of the Garden of Eden.[475]

There were many other objections to the theory which located the Paradise of Delights at the headwaters of the Tigris and the Euphrates. Not the least of these was the rigorous climate of the Armenian uplands. For this reason, and for others that need not here be specified, scholars began to consider more favorably the hypothesis which placed the Garden of Eden somewhere in southern Babylonia. Among the first of these was John Calvin. He identifies the Gehon and the Phison with the Tigris and the Euphrates, in as much as he gives the names Gehon and Phison to the two lower reaches of these rivers, which connect the Shat-el-Arab with the Persian Gulf.[476] But Calvin’s theory regarding the location of Paradise is at variance with the words of the Sacred Text while his assumption of the antiquity of the two channels which connect the Shat-el-Arab with the Persian Gulf is completely negatived by the teachings of science respecting the recent formation of these watercourses.

The first one who ventured to state precisely in what part of Babylonia Eden was located was Pierre Daniel Huet, the learned bishop of Avranches. This he did in his celebrated Tractatus de Situ Paradisi, a book which had so great a vogue that it passed through many editions and was translated into several languages. So clear to him were the indications of the Genesiac narrative respecting the site of Paradise that he declares “I have often marveled that interpreters have shut their eyes to them and have worried with many and so various conjectures which were so little in keeping with the plain words of the Sacred Text.” As for himself he had no doubt about the site of the Garden of Eden. He was sure he could indicate the exact spot where the first pair lived before the fall. It was, he opined, in a bend of the river now known as the Shat-el-Arab and at a point which, according to Ptolemy’s map, is located in latitude 32° 39´ and in longitude 80° 10´. This, as the map drawn to illustrate his view shows, was near Aracca—the Erech of Scripture.

Huet’s view as to the location of Paradise was essentially the same as that of Calvin whose theory was closely followed not only by the theologians of Louvain but also by Joseph Scaliger—the father of modern chronology—and by other scholars innumerable. But, although the good bishop thought he had determined the exact spot where the first human pair first saw the light of day and, although very many of his contemporaries seemed to share his views, it was not long until other hypotheses were promulgated regarding the much disputed site of humanity’s original home. Not counting, however, the fanciful and ingenious speculations of certain authors already mentioned, the general consensus of scholars, since the time of Dom Calmet, seems to have favored southern Babylonia as the land in which “the Lord God planted” the ever-mysterious, the ever-elusive Garden of Eden.

This is particularly true since investigators have had the powerful aid of the new and all-important sciences of geology and Assyriology. They have eliminated many fantastic notions that so long marred the works of the most serious men of science and have shown that certain assumptions formerly made by exegetes must now be regarded as quite impossible. And the general trend of these two sciences has been to illumine and corroborate the much debated statements of the second chapter of Genesis in the most unexpected manner.

Thus, one of the oldest accounts of Creation, as given in a cuneiform inscription discovered some decades ago by the noted Orientalist, T. F. Pinches, “carries us directly to Babylonia. In this the creation of the earth is but a preparation for that of the Garden which stood eastward in Eden, in the center, it would seem of the world. The garden was watered by a river which after fulfilling its work was parted into ‘four heads’ and flowed in four different streams. Of these two were the great rivers of the Babylonian plain, the Tigris and the Euphrates; the others bear names which have not yet been identified with certainty.

“The scenery, however, is entirely Babylonian. The Eden itself, in which the garden was planted, was the plain of Babylonia. This we know from the evidence of the cuneiform texts. It was called by its inhabitants Edinu, a word borrowed by the Semites from the Accado-Sumerian edin, ‘the (fertile) plain.’ To the East of it lay the land of the ‘nomads,’ termed Nod in Genesis and Manda in the inscriptions. The river which watered the Garden was the Persian Gulf, known to the Babylonians as ‘the river,’ or more fully ‘the bitter’ or ‘salt river.’ It was regarded as the source of the four other rivers whose ‘heads’ were the spots where they flowed into the source which at once received and fed them.”[477]

Regarding the rivers which are mentioned in the Edenic narrative, Mr. Sayce, the distinguished Orientalist, seems to have no doubt. Chief among them are the Tigris and the Euphrates whose names date back to early Accadian times. “Though it is questionable,” he writes, “whether the names of the Pison and the Gihon have hitherto been detected on the cuneiform monuments, it is not difficult to determine the rivers with which they must be identified.“[478] These rivers, he endeavors to show, must have been the Kerkhah, the Choaspes of the classical writers, and a stream which is now represented by the Pallakopas Canal. In the first of these two rivers he sees the Gehon of Genesis which ”compasseth the whole land of Cush,” while in the second he recognizes the Phison which “compasseth the whole land of Havilah.”

As to the location of Eden it was, according to Accado-Sumerian inscriptions, near the sacred city of Eridu which, some six thousand years ago, was “the great seaport of Babylonia,” but of which nothing now remains but “the rubbish heaps of Abu-Shahrein.” “When Eridu still stood on the seacoast,” continues Sayce, “not only the Tigris but other rivers also flowed into the Persian Gulf. The great salt ‘river,’ as it was termed, received the waters of four in all at no great distance from the walls of Eridu.”[479]

As seen from the foregoing paragraphs, Sayce like Calvin, Huet, and many other scholars, also places the Garden of Eden in southern Babylonia and only about twenty miles from the spot so confidently indicated by the scholarly bishop of Avranches as the site of the Terrestrial Paradise.

No less interesting than Sayce’s view, which is based entirely on the teachings of Assyriology, is the conclusion arrived at by the noted Canadian investigator, J. W. Dawson, from data supplied by the science of geology of which he was a recognized master. With Sayce he agrees that the Kerkhah is the Gehon of Genesis but contends that the river Karun, instead of the Pallakopas Canal, as his English confrère maintains, is the Phison.