ON THE GARDEN OF EDEN: Ly. 
whether it meant to give leave for a positive act or to 
retard and hinder. 
As for the dependence upon the root of Semitic words 
that is also misleading, because anything may be construed 
from two or three letters. As an example, I will only quote 
afew Arabic words consisting of two letters, and you will 
see at once how difficult it is to determine upon the sense 
of a word by a person who has never heard the language 
spoken, or mixed with the natives of the country where 
Semitic is the vernacular language. 
The word J Kl, consisting of two letters equivalent to 
K and L, means all, eat, and, be quiet; the word ure Mn. 
M and N, means from, manna, who, and a certain weight ; 
and (y Bl, B and L, means but, to moisten, quarrelsome, 
and, to unite. 
Moreover, the different Semitic languages have undergone 
so many changes for the last two thousand years that one 
might write thousands of words used in one place which 
would not be understood in another. If an Arab of Algiers 
or Morocco would be taken to Arabia Felix he would be 
difficult to understand ; like the difference existing 
between the Latin and its cognate languages, the Italian, 
Spanish, and Portuguese. We must, therefore, take into 
consideration the provincialism of the land of Uz, at the time 
when the Book of Job was written, and place it in the samé 
category with other Semitic languages of that time.* 
I am fully convinced that the land of Uz lies to the north- 
west of Orfa, and its capital was where the present peculiar 
ruins of Wairan Shahir exist. It was a Chaldean city, and it 
must have been destroyed by an earthquake, as the shops, 
houses, and churches, which were built of huge basalt stone, 
are all thrown down as if by a supernatural convulsion. 
* Let us take, as an example, the present tongues of the Turks, Persians, 
Hindustanis, and even the Abyssinians, called Amharic, and we shall find 
that the association and intermixing of those races with Arabic-speaking 
people have corrupted their original languages to such an extent that it 
would be quite impossible for their progenitors, if they were living, to 
understand them. We know that Constantinople is not either in Arabia, 
Persia, or Tartary, and yet, the predominant race which sways the sceptre 
there issues its edicts and literature, not in an European, but in a mongrel 
patois composed of Arabic, Persian, and Tartar dialects. 
+ Mr. Ainsworth remarks on the site of Wairan Shahir as follows :-— 
“ We identified this ruined town and stronghold with the Lacotena or 
Lacobena of the Tables, which is evidently the same as the Lavinianesina 
