110 HORMUZD RASSAM, ESQ., 
I feel convinced that if a scientific research be conducted 
in the country that les in the highlands of Armenia, Asia 
Minor, and Coordistan, it would be found that the souree of 
the four rivers of Paradise was shattered either by an earth- 
quake or a volcanic eruption, and dispersed the original 
“heads” into a thousand streams. There is no doubt that 
the courses of the four rivers below the mountam range are 
the same to-day as they were when they parted from the 
main source,—the river of Eden, but through some derange- 
ment that took place some time or other at the fountam-head 
(as it happened at Antioch in 115 A.D.), thousands of streams 
were created thereby which found their way into new 
channels.” 
The present sources of the Euphrates and the Tigris con- 
sist each of two main streams; those of the former start from 
the north and north-west of Lake Wan, distinguished on the 
map as east and west Moorad, a name given by the natives, 
which means “ desirable,” and those of the latter issue from 
the west of the lake. The largest which passes Diar- 
bekir rises from within a few miles of the east Euphrates, 
and the other comes down from above Bitlis, and joins the 
Diarbekir branch about 20 miles below Saart, at a place 
mentioned by Xenophon as Centritis, when he, with “the ten 
thousand” Greeks, was met by a formidable host of Ar- 
menians, Mygdonians, and Chaldeans, who opposed their 
passage.f att 
There is, on the way between Swairak and Diarbekir, on 
Karrach Dagh,} an old bed of a river which must have passed 
through that part as tributary to the Tigris or Euphrates, 
because the latter runs within 20 miles to the south of 
* In a note upon the Rivers of Eden, Genesis, chap 11, verse 10, Dr. F. 
Delitzsch makes the following remark :—“ That the continents of our 
globe have undergone great changes since the eyeation of the human race, 
is a truth sustained by the facts of natural history and the earliest national 
traditions, and admitted by the most celebrated naturalists (see the 
collection of proofs made by Keerl). The changes must not be all 
attributed to the flood ; many may have occurred before and many after, 
like the catastrophe in which the Dead Sea originated, without being 
recorded in history as this has been. Still less must be interpreted, chap. 
xi. 1 (compared with x., 25) as Fabir and Keeyrl have done, as indicating a 
complete revolution of the globe, or a geogonic progress, by which the 
continents of the old world were divided and assumed their present 
physiognomy.”—(Commentary on the Pentateuch. Keil and Delitzsch, vol. 
i., page 81). 
+ Anab, Book iv., chap. 3. 
t Two Turkish words which mean “rugged mountain.” 
