ON THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 107 
tenements at Yatlows were buried under landslips, and one 
plantation was removed half a mile from its place, the crops 
continuing to grow upon it uninjured. Between Spanish 
Town and Sixteen-Mile-Walk, the high and perpendicular 
cliffs bounding the river fell in, stopped the passage of the 
river, and flooded the latter place for nine days, so that the 
people concluded it had been sunk as Port Royal was. But 
the flood at length subsided, for the river had found some 
new passage at a great distance.”* 
My idea is that the Lake of Wan, which is very salt, was 
not in existence when the narrative of the Garden of Eden 
was written; but through either an earthquake or a volcanic 
eruption it came into existence, together with the conical 
sublime mountain that lies on its north side, called by the 
natives Soobhan-Dagh.t At the base of that mountain 
lumps of obsidian are found in great abundance, of which | 
brought a specimen. ‘T’o the west of the lake, above Bitlis, 
there is another mountain called “ Nimroud Dagh,” or moun- 
tain of Nimroud, on the top of which there is a large sweet- 
water lake containing abundance of fish. According to 
tradition that lake has no bottom, and it is supposed to 
communicate with a subterraneous, unfathomable abyss! 
Not a few lakes and ponds are found in different parts of 
Armenia and the adjoining districts bordering on it, especially 
towards the north. 
As for rivulets, springs, and natural wells, they are in- 
numerable all over Armenia, Coordistan, and the highland 
of Assyria. The great puzzle that presents itself to a 
traveller who has visited the sources and the mouths of the 
Euphrates, the Tigris, and the Zab, is to account for the 
consumption of the hundreds and thousands of rivulets that 
feed those rivers; and yet, when the latter reach the plains 
of Assyria and Mesopotamia, not a tenth of the volume of 
water that comes down from the tributaries of those rivers 
is noticeable below. 
Mr. Ainsworth, already referred to, gives a very in- 
teresting account of the country around the Lake of Wan, 
and as his scientific notices about the volcanic nature of 
the rocks there bear upon the theory I am mooting, it will 
* Vol. ii, page 162. 
{ The country around Wan abounds with salt springs, which, however, 
do not run above ground. 
{ This name is a compound of two words; the first is Arabic which 
means “ Divine,” or “ He who is worthy of praise”; and the second is 
Turkish, Coordish, and Persian, for ‘f mountain,” 
