7Z 

 THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 



Somewhere in Arabia. 



The Geographical Journal for August, 1912, reports a lecture 

 delivered by Sir William Willcocks, K. C. M. G., before the Royal 

 Geographical Society on June 10, 1912. Lecturing in November, 

 1909. in this hall, on "Mesopotamia, Past, Present and Future," 

 he said : I placed the Garden of Eden of our Bible on the upper 

 Euphrates between Anah and Hit. Here must have been the 

 first civilized settlement of the Semites, the ancestors of the chil- 

 dren of Israel, as they moved down from the north-west. And 

 it may interest some to know that in the latitude of this region, 

 not far from Damascus, wild wheat plants have within recent 

 years been discovered. The wearing down of the cataracts de- 

 prived the settlers of the waters of the friendly river which had 

 watered their garden, and they traveled eastwards and could see 

 behind them nothing but the bitumen springs on the east of Eden, 

 which seemed to them like flaming swords in the hands of the of- 

 fended seraphim. Like all early peoples they called themselves 

 the sons of men who had already conquered the Tigris-Euphrates 

 delta, and among whom had settled those of their sons whose 

 hands were stained with blood and who could no longer be per- 

 mitted to reside in the tents of their tribe. 



As these people understood nature, the river by itself could not 

 begin life until its waters had mingled with those of the sea, and 

 from their union under the action of the flux and reflux of the 

 tides sprung the marshes where life began on earth. As a matter 

 of fact, salt water never reaches the marshes owing to the delta of 

 the Karan lying between them and the sea. 



The effect of the 10-foot tide in the gulf is communicated to 

 the rivers, and travels up nearly 100 miles, but no salt water gets 

 into the marshes. To the writers of these very early epics the 

 Deep was a fresh-water deep. 



With translations of the Babylonian tablets of creation in my 

 hand, and the plans and levels of the country before me, I have 

 endeavored, on the spot, to give local color to the passages de- 

 scribing the Garden of Eden of Sumer and Akkad. After some 

 thousands of years, the Euphrates in these reaches is again 

 traversing wide marshes. For some 70 miles in length the river 

 has left its old channel and. flowing over a flat plain some 12 miles 

 wide, is covering it with 2 or 3 feet of water. I have seen Arabs 

 taking reeds and earth and throwing up well-protected banks in 

 the time of low supply and so enclosing areas of land for culti- 

 vation and habitation, which will be safe from the attacks of the 

 Euphrates. 



