torrents during the [pg 25] rainy season, and a dried up, parched, barren spot, drying up, “towards the end of May, or first of June; without a green thing,”—utterly uninhabitable,—and which Engel admits, “has always been so.”

The chief value of Engel's production, as well as Dr. Warren's North Pole Garden, is to show, (in Dr. Warren's own language.) “The imperishable interest of the Eden problem;” and to leave the subject entirely clear for me, and a calm consideration of the facts of the case as we find them. Dr. Warren, naturally, (as anyone who undertakes to do a thing and fails,) scouts the idea of anyone else doing it, or of a litteral four rivered; Garden of Eden. So have others who have failed to find it.

Engel puts in a claim of Divine inspiration directing him to the spot; and he writes with the positiveness and unreasonableness of a crank. All the inspiration we claim, is the beauty and grandeur of the scenery, and the adaptation and facsimile, or actual description of the spot, to the description given in the Bible, a Divinely inspired book, as our guide to it.

We are aware that we are living in an age of scientific speculation, of counterfeits, and humbugs. After misguided explorers have given up the search, in the Eastern Continent, a scientest, to show his skill, must throw a cloud on the possibility of finding a literal “four rivered spot,” on earth, and gives us an ingenious unaproachable North Pole Garden. A crank gives us a volcanic “Tartarian,” riverless desert as the spot, under a profession of Divine inspiration, A land speculator, [pg 26] must dress up a Florida malarial swamp as the place, to entice purchasers to his lands. Now, providentially, we are clear of all these objections. We do not have an unapproachable, frozen sea; or Tartarian volcanic region; or malarial swamp; or government, or company, lands to sell. Our Garden is principally owned by actual settlers. All the land I own, is a burial lot in the Galesville cemetery, and not for sale; and not many have money enough to purchase it.

But we have an Eden that challenges your attention; and a Garden that will awaken your admiration. Come and see! Please notice the natural youuthfulness of the region immediately around our Garden. Take about a hundred miles square,—of which our Garden is the centre,—and you will have some of the most charming mountain and valley scenery in the world, minus the mountains, or all in miniature, just such hills and valleys in which the youth most delight. A more appropriate region to surround the Garden we cannot conceive. While immediately outside of this region you enter upon a broad level country, principally prairie, of rich farming lands, indicating the next step in developed humanity, and the very beau ideal of an Eden; and as you go outward, the earth abounds in minerals, and in unlimited sources of wealth. Take a map of Palestine giving a birds-eye view of the hills and valleys, of which Jerusalem is somewhat central, and you will have a fair representation or view of the region around our Garden, and see the force of the expression, “as the hills are round about Jerusalem, so is the Lord [pg 27] round about his people,” and so are the hills round about our Garden.

Did you say as you looked down over our Garden valley, that this is too large a plat of ground for the Garden of Eden? Bless you! have you not considered that the Garden should be proportionate to the Land of Eden? Why, did you think that the Garden of Eden was only a half-acre garden patch, or small orchard? Read again your Bible on that subject. How could you get four rivers into it then, to water it, and one of them a “Euphrates” a wonderful great river? And is not the usual idea of a garden, a beautiful rich flat, or valley, like Lot's plain of Jordan? Please just think again, how God had created the whole earth for the habitation of the human family, and would he stint the allotment of the first pair? Did you think how long they lived, how many children they probably had, what a numerous family before the first pair died, numbering into the ten thousands? Did you ever give thought to the plan of settlement, of these children? Of the necessity of water thoroughfares, and the wisdom of God in locating them in some grand centre, as is this garden, in this central, wonderful water-shed in this Eden as already shown, comprising the great centre of this continent; and that when this garden should be well filled with inhabitants, by means of boats, and easy water conveyance, they could easily branch out and make settlements along the rivers? Can you grasp the mightiness of Jehovah's plan, in locating the first pair at the junction of so many rivers into one so great a river, and central to this Eden; thus naturally [pg 28] and easily to extend the settlements over so vast a region of excellent country, as this Eden—the greatest half of a continent,—and all this before the invention of wagon roads and railroads. Please give it wise thought, before deciding it so quickly.

Did you pugh! pugh! at the idea of the garden, and antdieluvian settlements, being so far away from Mt. Ararat? An ingenious Yankee, F. H. Kribs, has figured that out long ago; that the ark would naturally go eastward, and would just about reach that mountain in the time it was floating; and that the current ran eastward is proven by the eastward direction of submerged antediluvian trees. Then, how natural that God should remove the redeemed ones far away from the scenes and remembrances of human corruption and abominations before the flood; and let him develop “up anew,” in the midst of new scenes and surroundings, and, as it were, in a “new world,” until the sufficient development of his being, to allow, by slow stages, to return him to the place of commencement. Did you ask what mean these mounds, or earthly representations of such a variety of living objects, so plentiful in and around this garden, and scattered throughout the country of Eden, on one of which we are now standing? There was science and durability in their construction. Did he say they were built by the mound-builders? Evidently; but who are the mound-builders? That is not in history or tradition. The first who came here after the flood, found the mounds here, and asked the question: who are the mound-builders? The mound-builders [pg 29] were silent. And every new comer and every generation have asked that question, but no one could answer. Naturally enough, “There was not one left to tell the tale.” They had unwisely, and laboriously used their time, strength, and ingenuity, for unworthy objects and purposes, and not for the comfort, education, and moral development of humanity. They had added to their folly wickedness; “they had changed the truth of God into a lie;” had “served and worshiped the creature, (and dirt images) and not their Creator;” and God had blotted them out, while some of their earthworks remain.

Did a lawyer from this place, make a point in his plea before court at Whitehall, by declaring that I must be mistaken in my locality of the Garden of Eden, for lack of the presence of a personal devil? In retort, I am compelled to say, that I was sent a missioniary to this