The Seat of the Garden of Eden

Eminent German Geologists and Ethnologists maintain that the locality of Man's primitive origin, the seat of the Garden of Eden—the so-called "Paradise"—was in the Pacific Ocean, south of the present continent of Asia, westward to Africa, and eastward to Australia. When the great Pacific continent [1] slowly sank, so that the ocean commenced filling up the valleys, Man retreated to the mountains, which, by continued sinking, were transformed into islands; and now form the many groups of Polynesia. If this theory could be reconciled with the narrative in the Sacred Volume (see Genesis, ii. 10, 11, 12, 13, 14)—and Scripture Commentators confess that the sites of some countries, cities, and places mentioned in the Bible are even yet unascertained—it would explain the origin of the ancient temples and other buildings found in America after its discovery by Christopher Columbus, A.D. 1492; and proclaim the great civilization of the inhabitants of the Pacific continent before its submersion. It is not, however, difficult to understand that, civilized as those people may then have been, the insular position of the races thus preserved should, in the absence of intercourse with other civilized nations, have, in the course of ages, conduced to a savage condition—savage in some instances even at the present day; nor is it difficult to see that their insular position should also have conduced to the preservation of their language— whatever it may have been.

Writing of the Pyramids of Egypt—"those stupendous monuments of human labour and engineering skill," Canon U. J. Bourke says:

Notes

[1] Continent: It is a well-known fact that the whole Pacific coast (especially California) with all its mountains, is perpetually rising, and that at a comparatively rapid rate. The land containing on its bosom the great American lakes is slowly sinking; while Southern Indiana, Kentucky, and the surrounding States are rising. Geological investigations prove that those great lakes, except Ontario, had formerly a southern outlet; until, by gradual northern depressions and southern upheavals, a northern outlet was formed from Lake Erie into Lake Ontario, about forty thousand years ago! This outlet—the Niagara river—is still wearing its channel. The division line of the watershed south of the lakes and the Mississippi Valley has since that time been steadily travelling southward; and when Chicago recently turned the water of Lake Michigan through the Chicago river into the Mississippi Valley, the old state of affairs was artificially re-established. New Jersey is sinking, with New York City and Long Island, at the estimated rate of about sixteen inches per century. The coast of Texas is ascending at a comparatively very rapid rate—some observers stating that it is as much as thirty or forty inches in the last half century. Combining these observations with the results of the recent deep-sea soundings of the United States steamer "Tuscarora," in the Pacific Ocean, we find that the bed of that ocean is evidently a sunken continent; abounding in volcanic mountains some twelve thousand feet high, many of them not reaching the surface of the ocean, and others, which do so, forming the numberless islands of the Pacific. The study of coral rocks proves that this sinking has continually been taking place during several centuries ; and observations of the coast reveals the fact that it has not ceased.