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JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS, 131 
3. As the earth at present, with its solid crust, is not a true 
sphere, but flattened a little at the poles, such, more or less, must 
have been its shape while it was still molten ; thus the rays of the 
sun fell more obliquely at the poles then as now, thus receiving less 
heat from the sun than at the equator. 
The most advanced opinion of scientific men is, that from the 
reasons given the earth first crusted at the poles. I think I can 
produce convincing evidence that man first began life at the North 
Pole ; that I can establish the fact that the Garden of Eden was sit- 
uated at the North Pole, and that Captain Bernier, in his effort to 
reach that spot, struggles only to reach the old homestead. Whilst 
accepting the scripture statement in reference to the ejection from 
the garden, yet man, by the cold, was driven from his most northern 
home and was compelled to flee before the ice monster. Driven by 
necessity, he did what no other amimal has done—clothed himself, 
made a fire, not only to warm himself, but to cook his food and to 
_ Offer sacrifice to his God. 
Perhaps in dealing with this subject I ought to begin first of all 
with the theological side of the statement, and I may say that theo- 
logians, both Christian and Jewish, have in all ages differed as to the 
cradle of the human race. The early Church, and also that of the 
middle ages, held many conflicting and curious opinions on this 
subject. Some say that Eden was nota place at all, but a state only ; 
that the four rivers spoken of in Genesis were not rivers, but four 
cardinal virtues. Others, however, held the historical character of 
the narrative, but it matters not to us; the earth is here, and man is 
here, and as the earth was not always habitable, man could not 
always have lived upon it, hence a time for the habitability and a time 
for man to come upon it. The time was when some part of it was 
sufficiently cool, as it has, I think, been shown that it was not all 
equally cool at the same time. ‘The first cool portion was evidently 
at the North Pole, and the place where man first lived, I think, can 
be shown was there. Let an ordinary reader of the Bible, unbiased, 
read the second chapter of Genesis, 8th verse—‘‘ And the Lord God 
planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he put the man whom 
he had formed.” Scarcely can such a reader doubt that this places 
the garden to the east of Palestine. But let the reader look care- 
fully and he will see that the verse does not affirm anything as to the 
