The Garden of Eden

73:3.1The com­mit­tee on lo­ca­tion was ab­sent for al­most three years. It re­ported fa­vor­ably con­cern­ing three pos­si­ble lo­ca­tions: The first was an is­land in the Per­sian Gulf; the sec­ond, the river lo­ca­tion sub­se­quently oc­cu­pied as the sec­ond gar­den; the third, a long nar­row penin­sula—al­most an is­land—pro­ject­ing west­ward from the east­ern shores of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean Sea.

73:3.2The com­mit­tee al­most unan­i­mously fa­vored the third se­lec­tion. This site was cho­sen, and two years were oc­cu­pied in trans­fer­ring the world’s cul­tural head­quar­ters, in­clud­ing the tree of life, to this Med­i­ter­ra­nean penin­sula. All but a sin­gle group of the penin­sula dwellers peace­ably va­cated when Van and his com­pany ar­rived.

73:3.3This Med­i­ter­ra­nean penin­sula had a salu­bri­ous cli­mate and an equable tem­per­a­ture; this sta­bi­lized weather was due to the en­cir­cling moun­tains and to the fact that this area was vir­tu­ally an is­land in an in­land sea. While it rained co­pi­ously on the sur­round­ing high­lands, it sel­dom rained in Eden proper. But each night, from the ex­ten­sive net­work of ar­ti­fi­cial ir­ri­ga­tion chan­nels, a “mist would go up” to re­fresh the veg­e­ta­tion of the Gar­den.

73:3.4The coast line of this land mass was con­sid­er­ably el­e­vated, and the neck con­nect­ing with the main­land was only twenty-seven miles wide at the nar­row­est point. The great river that wa­tered the Gar­den came down from the higher lands of the penin­sula and flowed east through the penin­su­lar neck to the main­land and thence across the low­lands of Mes­o­po­ta­mia to the sea be­yond. It was fed by four trib­u­taries which took ori­gin in the coastal hills of the Edenic penin­sula, and these are the “four heads” of the river which “went out of Eden,” and which later be­came con­fused with the branches of the rivers sur­round­ing the sec­ond gar­den.

73:3.5The moun­tains sur­round­ing the Gar­den abounded in pre­cious stones and met­als, though these re­ceived very lit­tle at­ten­tion. The dom­i­nant idea was to be the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of hor­ti­cul­ture and the ex­al­ta­tion of agri­cul­ture.

73:3.6The site cho­sen for the Gar­den was prob­a­bly the most beau­ti­ful spot of its kind in all the world, and the cli­mate was then ideal. Nowhere else was there a lo­ca­tion which could have lent it­self so per­fectly to be­com­ing such a par­a­dise of botanic ex­pres­sion. In this ren­dezvous the cream of the civ­i­liza­tion of Uran­tia was for­gath­er­ing. With­out and be­yond, the world lay in dark­ness, ig­no­rance, and sav­agery. Eden was the one bright spot on Uran­tia; it was nat­u­rally a dream of love­li­ness, and it soon be­came a poem of ex­qui­site and per­fected land­scape glory.