The daily morning Astorian. [volume] (Astoria, Oregon) 1883-1899, 1895-08-25
Some Recent COnjectures as 70
It's Location.
CRADLE OF RACE ON THE NILE
The Garden Was Originally Discov-
cred by Stanley and Is Described
in FLOWING Terms.

New York Sun.
An English Psychologist, Mr.. w. Mars
nam Adams, has been for some time en-
gagged in an endeavor to solve the struc-
tural enigma OF the great pyramid and
to elicit from the ancient religious books
of the Me land, and especially from the
so-caied Book of the Dead, c.ew to
the creed of the early Egypt. In the
volumes embodying the outcome of his
researches he arrives at interesting con-
clusions regarding the simplicity and
purity of the Oldest Egyptian faith, and
discerns in it a curious conformity, so far
as the main lines are concerned, to Chris
tianity, That to which, however, he would
at this time invite particular attention,
is that the assertion that his read
ings in the sacred books of Egypt bear
out the record of Genesis as to the seat
the earthly paradise, and that conse-
quently, the cradle of the human race
must he looked for in Africa at some
point in the watershed of the Nile.
Let us mark the grounds for this at
tempt at a new Identification of the
Garden of Eden. Mr.. Adams points out
the region of the great lakes, there are
as in the place described in Genesis, the
"heads" of four rivers, which "go forth
to water the whole country" There, be-
yond the Zambesi, lies the land of gold
with its mines of unknown antiquity, and
bearing an odorOus herb of which the
hieroglyphic name is beru, suggesting the
original of the Hebrew word betelu, con-
veTted by the Greeks into bdellium
There is the fountain of the winding
Niger, and there the source of the in
undating Nile There, too, is the Congo,
hn fsiNr Of 20 4
the Hebrew Perth 6ruitfuD, transformed
10y the Greeks into the Euphrates.
What Mr. Adams deems more striking
still is the fact that in the eastward por-
ton of this great basin lies the garden
of paradise 5000 square miles in area,
described in glowing terms by Stanley as
fun of animal life, the scepter expressing
dominion over which was one OF the in
sigma Of the Egyptian deity Amen. From
that garden flows a single river, the
Shari, exactly as in the Scriptural ac-
count the single river flowed in the midst
to water the garden, which was placed
in the astward part of the immense
watershed of Eden. Thence according to
MIR. Adams theory, the stream of human
emigration found its way along the line
of least resistance to the fertile plains
of Egypt, probably the seat of the most
ancient civilization in the world, diffus-
ing itself into the delta of the Nile along
the shores of the Mediterranean.
To a certain extent the ground was
prepared for the effort to connect the
record of Genesis primarily with old
Egyptian rather than with the Chaldaic
tradition. Since Egyptian monuments
have been studied in the light of astron-
omy there has been tendency to hold
that the civilization of Egypt was de-
rived from two sources of emigration, the
one situated in the Abyssinian highlands
or elsewhere in the watershed of the
Nile, the other in Mesopotamia. It is
thought, however, that the northward
stream of emigration was the earlier.
Moreover, many Assyriologists concur in
thinking that ancient Chaldea was prin-
clpally indebted for civilizing agencies
TO emigrants coming by way of the Per-
sian gulf, from Abyssinia or southwest
Arabia. 1t should also be noted that
sinoiogues are now disposed to trace the
origin of Chinese civilization to emisrants
from Chaidea, whose own culture, as we
have said, is belved by many to be de-
rivative. So that there is something like
a consensus of conjecture pointing to
the watershed of the Nile as the cradle
OF civilized man.