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APPENDIX.
courses were given to the Tigris and the Euphrates, passing under the Red Sea, until they sprang forth in Armenia, as if just issuing from one common source.
S o 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 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, in his commentary upon the book of Genesis, 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. B y 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 sun,"* 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 the garden beyond the equinoctial line
and placed it in the southern hemisphere ; supposing that the torrid zone might be the naming sword appointed to defend its entrance against mor足 tals.
T h e y 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 favorable and benign aspect of the heavens.
N o w , according to philosophers, the world
was divided into two hemispheres.
T h e southern they considered the
head, and the northern the feet, or under part ; the right hand the east, whence commenced the movement of the primum mobile, and the left the
* Herodot. lib. iii.
Virg. Georg. i.
Pomp. Mela, lib. iii. cap. 10.