In his third voyage, when for the first time he reached the main land, he was persuaded not only that he had arrived at the extremity of Asia, but that he could not be far from the position of paradise. The Orinoco seemed to be one of those four great rivers which, according to tradition, came out of the garden inhabited by our first parents, and his hopes were supported by the fragrant breezes that blew from the beautiful forests on its banks. This, he thought, was but the entrance to the celestial dwelling-place, and if he had dared—if a religious fear had not held back him who had risked everything amidst the elements and amongst men, he would have liked to push forward to where he might hope to find the celestial boundaries of the world, and, a little further, to have bathed his eyes, with profound humility, in the light of the flaming swords which were wielded by two seraphim before the gate of Eden.
He thus expresses himself on this subject in his letter to one of the monarchs of Spain, dated Hayti, October, 1498. "The Holy Scriptures attest that the Lord created paradise, and placed in it the tree of life, and made the four great rivers of the earth to pass out of it, the Ganges of India, the Tigris, the Euphrates (passing from the mountains to form Mesopotamia, and ending in Persia), and the Nile, which rises in Ethiopia and goes to the Sea of Alexander. I cannot, nor have been ever able to find in the books of the Latins or Greeks anything authentic on the site of this terrestrial paradise, nor do I see anything more certain in the maps of the world. Some place it at the source of the Nile, in Ethiopia; but the travellers who have passed through those countries have not found either in the mildness of the climate or in the elevation of the site towards heaven anything that could lead to the presumption that paradise was there, and that the waters of the Deluge were unable to reach it or cover it. Several pagans have written for the purpose of proving it was in the Fortunate Isles, which are the Canaries. St. Isidore, Bede, and Strabo, St. Ambrosius, Scotus, and all judicious theologians affirm with one accord that paradise was in the East. It is from thence only that the enormous quantity of water can come, seeing that the course of the rivers is extremely long; and these waters (of paradise) arrive here, where I am, and form a lake. There are great signs here of the neighbourhood of the terrestrial paradise, for the site is entirely conformable to the opinion of the saints and judicious theologians. The climate is of admirable mildness. I believe that if I passed beneath the equinoctial line, and arrived at the highest point of which I have spoken, I should find a milder temperature, and a change in the stars and the waters; not that I believe that the point where the greatest height is situated is navigable, or even that there is water there, or that one could reach it, but I am convinced that there is the terrestrial paradise, where no one can come except by the will of God."
In the opinion of this illustrious navigator the earth had the form of a pear, and its surface kept rising towards the east, indicated by the point of the fruit. It was there that he supposed might be found the garden where ancient tradition imagined the creation of the first human couple was accomplished.
We can scarcely think without astonishment of the great amount of darkness that obscured scientific knowledge, when this great man appeared on the scene of the world, nor of the rapidity with which the obscurity and vagueness of ideas were dissipated almost immediately after his marvellous discoveries. Scarcely had a half century elapsed after his death, than all the geographical fables of the middle ages did no more than excite smiles of incredulity, although during his life the universal opinion was not much advanced upon the times of the famous knight John of Mandeville, who wrote gravely as follows:—
"No mortal man can go to or approach this paradise. By land no one can go there on account of savage beasts which are in the deserts, and because of mountains and rocks that cannot be passed over, and dark places without number; nor can one go there any better by sea; the water rushes so wildly, it comes in so great waves, that no vessel dare sail against them. The water is so rapid, and makes so great a noise and tempest, that no one can hear however loud he is spoken to, and so when some great men with good courage have attempted several times to go by this river to paradise, in large companies, they have never been able to accomplish their journey. On the contrary, many have died with fatigue in swimming against the watery waves. Many others have become blind, others have become deaf by the noise of the water, and others have been suffocated and lost in the waves, so that no mortal man can approach it except by the special grace of God."
With one notable exception, no attempts have been made of late years to solve such a question. That exception is by the noble and indefatigable Livingstone, who declared his conviction to Sir Roderick Murchison, in a letter published in the Athenæum, that paradise was situated somewhere near the sources of the Nile.
Those generally who now seek an answer to the question of the birthplace of the human race do not call it paradise.
Since man is here, and there was a time quite recent, geologically speaking, when he was not, there must have been some actual locality on the earth's surface where he was first a man. Whether we have, or even can hope to have, enough information to indicate where that locality was situated, is a matter of doubt. We have not at present. Those who have attended most to the subject appear to think some island the most probable locality, but it is quite conjectural.
The name "Paradise" appears to have been derived from the Persian, in which it means a garden; similarly derived words express the same idea in other languages; as in the Hebrew pardês, in the Arabian firdaus, in the Syriac pardiso, and in the Armenian partes. It has been thought that the Persian word itself is derived from the Sanscrit pradesa, or paradesa, which means a circle, a country, or strange region; which, though near enough as to sound, does not quite agree as to meaning. "Eden" is from a Hebrew root meaning delights.