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0086 Cathay and the Way Thither : vol.2
Cathay and the Way Thither : vol.2 / Page 86 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000042
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326 MARIGNOLLI'S RECOLLECTIONS OF EASTERN TRAVEL.

idea is indeed so prominent that a short explanatory digression on the subject will not be inappropriate.

It was in the west that the ancients dreamed of sacred and happy islands, where the golden age had survived the deluge of corruption. But it was to the opposite quarter that the legends of the middle ages pointed, building as they did upon that garden which was planted " eastward in Eden"; and though it was in sailing west that Columbus thought he had found the skirts of Paradise near the mouths of Orinoco, it must be remembered that he was only seeking the " far East" by a shorter route.

What has been written on the Terrestrial Paradise would probably fill a respectable library. Marignolli's idea of it was evidently the same as that which seems to have been generally entertained in his age, viz., that of a great mountain rising in ineffable tranquillity and beauty far above all other earthly things, from which came. tumbling down a glorious cataract, dividing at the foot into four great rivers, which somehow or other, underground or over, found their several ways to the channels of Hiddekel and Euphrates, and of such other two streams as might be identified with Gihon and Phison. This mountain was frequently believed to rise to the sphere of the moon, an opinion said to be maintained even by such men as Augustine and Bede.'

The localities assigned to Paradise have been infinitely various. Old oriental tradition was satisfied to place it in Ceylon ; but western belief more commonly regarded it as in the more extreme fast, where John of Hese professes to have seen it. Cosmas,

"Joannes Hopkinsonius," however, who has disserted upon Paradise, judiciously stigmatizes this as a manifest figment. For, quoth he, is not the height of the moon according to Ptolemy and Alphraganus, seventeen times the earth's diameter; and would not such a mountain therefore require for a base at least the whole superficies of the terrestrial hemisphere, and deprive us of a great part of the sun's light ? Joannes Tostatus therefore is more reasonable when he says that Paradise does not quite reach the moon, but rises into the third region of the air, and is higher than all other mountains of the earth by twenty cubits ! (The saine John thinks Paradise was or is about twelve miles long, and some thirty-six or forty in compass.) Of his mind is Ariosto when he speaks of

" La cima

Che non lontana con la superba bulza

Dal cerchio della Luna esser si stima."—(xxxiv, 48.) (See Hopkinsonius, etc., in Ugolini, as quoted below, vii, pp. dcxi-xiii-xiv.)