The Second Garden

76:1.1It re­quired al­most a full year for the car­a­van of Adam to reach the Eu­phrates River. Find­ing it in flood tide, they re­mained camped on the plains west of the stream al­most six weeks be­fore they made their way across to the land be­tween the rivers which was to be­come the sec­ond gar­den.

76:1.2When word had reached the dwellers in the land of the sec­ond gar­den that the king and high priest of the Gar­den of Eden was march­ing on them, they had fled in haste to the east­ern moun­tains. Adam found all of the de­sired ter­ri­tory va­cated when he ar­rived. And here in this new lo­ca­tion Adam and his helpers set them­selves to work to build new homes and es­tab­lish a new cen­ter of cul­ture and re­li­gion.

76:1.3This site was known to Adam as one of the three orig­i­nal se­lec­tions of the com­mit­tee as­signed to choose pos­si­ble lo­ca­tions for the Gar­den pro­posed by Van and Amadon. The two rivers them­selves were a good nat­u­ral de­fense in those days, and a short way north of the sec­ond gar­den the Eu­phrates and Tigris came close to­gether so that a de­fense wall ex­tend­ing fifty-six miles could be built for the pro­tec­tion of the ter­ri­tory to the south and be­tween the rivers.

76:1.4Af­ter get­ting set­tled in the new Eden, it be­came nec­es­sary to adopt crude meth­ods of liv­ing; it seemed en­tirely true that the ground had been cursed. Na­ture was once again tak­ing its course. Now were the Adamites com­pelled to wrest a liv­ing from un­pre­pared soil and to cope with the re­al­i­ties of life in the face of the nat­u­ral hos­til­i­ties and in­com­pat­i­bil­i­ties of mor­tal ex­is­tence. They found the first gar­den par­tially pre­pared for them, but the sec­ond had to be cre­ated by the la­bor of their own hands and in the “sweat of their faces.”