Note 2 — Chapter II · The Trees of Paradise and the Tree of Adam.

Besides the localities already mentioned, Paradise has been located on Mount Ararat; in Persia; in Ethiopia; in the land now covered by the Caspian Sea; in a plain on the summit of Mount Taurus; in Sumatra; in the Canaries; and in the Island of Ceylon, where there is a mountain called the Peak of Adam, underneath which, according to native tradition, lie buried the remains of the first man, and whereon is shown the gigantic impress of his foot. Goropius Becanus places Paradise near the river Acesines, on the confines of India. Tertullian, Bonaventura, and Durandus affirm that it was under the Equinoctial, while another authority contends that it was situated beneath the North Pole. Virgil places the happy land of the Hyperboreans under the North Pole, and the Arctic Regions were long associated with ideas of enchantment and beauty, chiefly because of the mystery that has always enveloped these remote and unexplored regions. Peter Comestor and Moses Barcephas set Paradise in a region separated from our habitable zone by a long tract of land and sea, and elevated so that it reaches to the sphere of the moon. [↑]