NOAH'S FLOOD

WAS NOT WORLD WIDE

Pastor Bertrand L. Comparet

Among the many mistaken and un-Scriptural notions commonly taught in nearly all churches is the idea that the "flood", mentioned in the Bible, covered all the earth and drowned everybody on earth excepting only Noah and his family who escaped death by being in the Ark.  Some churches have firmly insisted that the Bible says this, when there is ample proof that the "flood" was not world wide.  With this teaching the churches have destroyed the faith of multitudes of people in the Bible.  They have made atheists or agnostics out of hundreds of thousands of people who might have become Christians if they had only been taught the truth about the Bible.

Part of this mistaken idea about the "flood" is due to the many mistranslations found in the commonly used King James version of the Bible. Also, part of it appears plainly to be false if you merely carefully read even the King James version. Let's have a look at it.

In Genesis chapter 6, we read that God found the people so corrupt that He regretted that He had ever created them, so He decided to wipe them out by a flood. He warned righteous Noah of the coming flood and told Noah to build a great boat, or ark, in which he and his family might find safety and where they might preserve a few of each kind of the animals from that area. In Chapter 7, it tells how Noah received the final warning that the time was now at hand and he should move into the art. Then it says, according to the King James version, "And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.

In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth 40 days and 40 nights. And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the waters. And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered. 15 cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl and of cattle, and of beast and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth; and every man.

And the waters prevailed upon the earth 150 days. And God remembered Noah and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark; and God made a wind to pass over the earth and the water assuaged. And the waters returned from off the earth continually and after the end of the 150 days the waters were abated. And the ark rested, in the 7th month, on the 17th day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat. And the waters decreased continually until the 10th month; in the 10th month, on the 1st day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen."

Now, first let us see what the translators have done to what Moses originally wrote. You remember that the King James version says that the rain was upon "the earth" and the waters increased greatly upon "the earth": and that "all flesh died that moved upon the earth"? Definitely not! Remember that in Genesis 4:14, when God has driven Cain away in punishment for his murder of Abel, the King James version quotes Cain as saying, "Behold, Thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth." So what did Cain do, climb into his rocket ship and take off for outer space? Of course not!! He was not driven from the face of "the earth", and he never said so, only the translators said so.

The word Cain used was "ad-aw-maw" meaning "the ground": God had told him that his farming would no longer be successful, so Cain said "Thou hast driven me off of the ground." (You have probably noticed that Cain's descendants today are not farmers. They run pawnshop and other money lending institutions.)

When we come to Genesis 7, where it is talking about the "flood", wherever it says that the flood covered "the earth", the Hebrew word used in the original writing by Moses was "eh-rats", meaning "the land". The flood did cover the particular land where it occurred. That is, it was a local flood which covered one particular region or land, not the whole earth.

Again, notice that it specifies that "15 cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered." In ancient times two different lengths of the cubit were in use, the sacred cubit of 25 inches and the common cubit of 20-5/8 inches. Therefore, the waters rose above the tops of the mountains it is speaking of by either 25 feet 9 inches or 31 feet 3 inches according to which cubit you use. If this meant that all the mountains on earth were covered, the waters would have to cover Mount Everest, which is nearly six miles high, therefore, all the earth would be covered by water six miles deep. In that case, where could it have run off to when the flood subsided? No, I don't mean that the Bible was that badly mistaken, only the translators made this mistake. The translators took the Hebrew word "eh-rets" which means "that land" and mistranslated it to mean the whole world. A little later, we shall look over the evidence which proves where "that land" was.

If the whole earth was covered by six miles of water, then all nations must have been completely exterminated. Yet Babylon, Egyptian and Chinese history runs right through this period without a break. The Bible gives the date of the flood as commencing in 2345 B.C. and ending in 2344 B.C..  In lower Sumer, later called "Chaldea" (and which occupied the same "Plains of Shinar" to which Noah's family journeyed after the flood), the city of Ur of the Chaldees was the leading city from about 2400 B.C. until about 2,285 B.C. and its history is not broken by any flood in this period. Farther to the north, Babylon was rising to power from about 2,400 B.C. on and reached a great height of civilization under the famous King Hammurabi, who lived at the same time as the Hebrew patriarch Abraham (about 2,250 B.C.), and again there is no break in this history due to a flood. In Egypt, the Eleventh Dynasty began to reign about 2,375 B.C. over a great and powerful nation. The Eleventh Dynasty ruled to about 2,212 B.C., and were followed by the Twelfth Dynasty, which ruled to about 2000 B.C.. There was no break in the Eleventh Dynasty at the time of Noah's flood, 2,345 B.C.. The nation continued to be large and powerful throughout this period.

Accurate history of China begins nearly 3,000 B.C.. The Shu-King historic record of China, shows that King Yao came to the throne in 2356 B.C., 11 years before the start of Noah's flood, and ruled China for many years after the flood. During the reign of Yao, the Shu King reports that the Hwang Ho River (which drains mountains and a great basin in Sinkiang province) had excessive floods for three generations. Here again, there was no break in history. The Chinese nation was not wiped out. Its own records show that it continued in existence right through the period of Noah's flood.

Therefore, the Bible is correct in stating that the Flood covered only "eh-rets", "that land". The translators are wrong when they change the meaning of what Moses really wrote in Genesis 7, and say that the flood covered all "the earth".

This leaves us ready to inquire where the flood did occur. For this, we will have to start with Adam and Eve and trace where they and their descendants went. They started out in the Garden of Eden. Genesis 2:10-14 tells us that a river went out of Eden and this river divided into four streams. It names these four rivers: Pison and Gihon (Neither of which can be identified among the rivers existing today), and Hiddekel (which is the ancient name of the Tigris River) and the Euphrates. The Tigris and Euphrates rise in what is today extreme southeastern Turkey, a little north of modern Iraq. Making some allowances for the fact that many rivers have changed their courses considerably in the course of several thousand years, this still placed the Garden of Eden at the northern end of ancient Akkad.

When Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden of Eden, Genesis 3:24, tells us that God placed cherubim with a flaming sword at the east side of the Garden of Eden, to keep Adam and Eve from returning and having access to the tree of life. If this guard was to accomplish anything, it must have been placed between Adam and the Garden of Eden. So we see that Adam and Eve were driven out to the east. From Eden, Adam's course would naturally have led him across northern Iran, around the southern end of the Caspian Sea, into what was formerly called Chinese Turkistan and today is known as Sinkiang province in the extreme west of China.

In the southern part of Sinkiang, there is a great basin, rimmed by high mountains on all sides, but with an outlet on the eastern end of it, through the mountains where the headwaters of the Hwang-Ho River, the Yellow River rises. This basin is today nearly all desert, but it bears evidence of a fertile and heavily inhabited past. Explorers have found ruins of ancient cities, uncovered by the drifting sands of the desert. Also the known geological structure shows that, in ancient times at least, beneath this desert lay an enormous underground natural reservoirs, caverns filled with water. It is the same geological structure which furnishes artesian water in many parts of the world today.

These underground reservoirs were covered by waterproof layers of rock, which kept the waters beneath from overflowing out on the land surface above them. In this mountain rimmed basin, then a fertile, well populated land, Adam and Eve, or at least their descendants of a few generations later, settled.

You who listen to this program already know that Adam was not the first man. He was only the first man in the present White Race. Adam and Eve found this land to which they had come already populated by an Asiatic people, among whom they had to live. Through the following generations, the inevitable happened.  Wherever there is integration, intermarriages and mongrelization of the races follows.  If God had no purposes in mind which could not be properly served by the Asiatic and negro races, there would have been no reason for Him to create Adam. Neither could the purposes which Adam and his descendants were intended to serve be fulfilled by a MONGRELIZED race. The consequences of this mongrelization are described in Genesis 6:5, "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." Again we find the word there mistranslated "earth" is the Hebrew word "eh-rats", which only means "the land", that particular land; and there is reason for using that Hebrew word, for this was the place where integration and mongrelization had taken place, with its degenerative effects as compared to the qualities possessed by each race separately.

We find confirmation of this in the reason why God spared Noah. In Genesis 6:9, your King James version Bible tells you that Noah was "perfect in his generations" a meaningless phrase. When anything in the King James version of the Bible fails to make good sense, it is a sign that you should go behind the mistranslation and see what the words were in the original Hebrew or Greek. The word here translated "generations" was the Hebrew word "to-lad-aw", which means "ancestry". That is, Noah was "perfect in his ancestry", a pure bred, not a mongrel.

Noah and his family were the last remaining pure blooded Adamites in the world, therefore, God needed to save them to carry out the purposes He had planned for the Adamic people. The MONGRELIZED people among whom Noah and his family lived must be removed, or they would be a trap which would eventually lead to the complete end of the pure blooded Adamites.

Have we any other evidence to support our view that this was the region where Adam and Eve and their descendants settled? Yes. Remember that Adam and Eve were driven out of Eden to the eastward. Later, when Cain murdered Abel, and as a punishment was banished from the land where Adam and Eve lived, Genesis 4"16 tells us that Cain "went out from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the Land of Nod, on the east of Eden." The Hebrew word "nod" means "wandering". That is, in the upper Tigris and Euphrates valleys, at the north of Eden, these rivers were running swiftly downhill from their mountain sources. Therefore, they cut themselves deep channels in the ground. Even today we can find the traces of the ancient diversion dams, built by the ancients to raise the water level up close to the surface of the ground, so they would not have to pump it so high to get it into their irrigation canals.

Farther to the south, in the lower Tigris and Euphrates Valleys, where the slope was no longer steep, the accumulation of silt picked up by the rivers where they ran swiftly was now settling to the bottom of the river beds, constantly raising the level, so that every high water season the rivers overflowed their banks and flooded the valleys. This is exactly the same as we have in our own Mississippi Valley. These annual floods washed away the people's houses and sent them fleeing far away to high ground. Therefore it was correctly called "the land of Nod", "the land of wandering". Here Cain settled, and taught the people to build high dikes along the river banks, just as we have done along the banks of the Mississippi river. This enabled them to stop the annual floods, so they could now build permanent cities of good houses in the lower Tigris and Euphrates Valleys, the land then called by its own inhabitants "Sumer", and later called "Chaldea".

In a very few places the Bible calls it "the Plain of Shinar". That is, Cain went back westward from where Adam and Eve lived. It was thus that Cain started his great empire. Yes, Cain is a well known historical character, found not only in the Bible (but he is known in history under another name). Cain established an empire which extended from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea and even took in some of the larger islands in the Mediterrean Sea.

Some day I will tell you about Cain and his empire but, that is another story.

Another bit of evidence is found in Genesis 11:2, which tells us that after the flood, Noah's descendants "journeyed FROM the east", until they came to the land of Shinar. Therefore, they must have come from some place east of the Tigris and Euphrates Valleys. The only place where such a flood as the Bible describes could have occurred, eastward from the Tigris and Euphrates Valleys, is this mountain basin in Sinkiand which I have been talking about.

Another bit of evidence is found in the high water mark found in many places along the mountains which rim this basin, showing that at one time this basin was a lake, extending to this well marked shoreline. The mountains which rim this valley were not fully covered, for many of them range from 16,000 to 25,000 feet in height and one even rises over 28,000 feet. But, within the basin are several smaller mountains which could be fully covered by a flood held within the higher rim of the valley. In short, this basin, through which flows the Tarim River and which is sometimes known as the Tarim basin in southern Sinkiang, is identified as the site of Noah's flood.

In your King James version Bible, Genesis 7:11-12 reads: "In the 600th year of Noah's life, in the 2nd month, the 17th day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up and the windows of heaven were opened. The rain was upon the earth 40 days and 40 nights." More careful translation makes clear what really happened, In moffatt's Modern English translation we read, "the fountains of the great abyss burst, and the sluices of heaven were opened". In Smith and Goodspeed's American translation, it says, "the fountains of the great abyss were all broken open, and the windows of the heavens were opened". That is, a great earthquake broke up this waterproof layer of rock over the immense, water filled abyss or cavern beneath this Tarim Basin, causing the floor of the valley to settle and allowed the enormous underground reservoir to overflow and submerge the valley floor. The great earthquake in the Himalaya Mountains about ten years ago produced similar effects in some places. Of course, the 40 days of torrential rains added to the flood. This filled the valley high enough to submerge the low mountains which were inside the valley, exactly as Genesis 7:19-20, says. Don't be misled by the mistranslation, "all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered". The word mistranslated "Heaven" is merely the Hebrew word "Shaw-meh", meaning "the sky". Since this Tarim Basin is somewhat more than 350 miles wide by more than 650 miles long, all the sky visible from anywhere near the center of this valley would cover only this valley and therefore only those lower mountains which were within the valley itself.

But what about Genesis 8:4, reading "And the ark rested in the 7th month, on the 17th day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat"? Sometimes failure to translate can be as misleading as mistranslation. Most people understand this to mean Mount Ararat, in Armenia, some 1,600 miles west of the Tarim Basin. This is NOT what the Bible says. First of all, note that it says "mountains of Ararat", mountains being in the plural, while Mount Ararat, in Armenia, is only a single peak. However, Mount Ararat in Armenia was known until comparatively recent times as Mount Massis", and nobody had ever heard of it being called "Mount Ararat" in Bible times. Furthermore, the Hebrew word "ararat" means only "the tops of the hills." Therefore correctly translated, Genesis 8:4 merely says that the ark came to rest upon the tops of the high hills, some of the lower mountains which were within the valley.

A recent newspaper report mentions an expedition, equipped with the latest electronic equipment, which is going to Mount Ararat in Armenia to find the ark. The expedition will melt the ice, which covers the ark, by coating it with black powdered carbon. They won't find the ark because it is not there. Several expeditions have gone to Mount Ararat to find the ark. Some of them got within sight of a mass on the side of the mountain which, from that particular point of view, looked to be shaped somewhat like a ship. That point has been very carefully inspected from the air, by airplanes flying over it very close and it has proved to be nothing but a ledge of rock which does give a silhouette shaped like a ship, when seen from the right direction. I need not mention the many places, such as the Grand Canyon etc., where similar "ship rocks" can be seen and none of them are Noah's Ark.

So, when we carefully examine the whole affair, and correct mistranslations, we find that there is no conflict between what the Bible really says and either science or history. In fact, there never is any such conflict, it is only the preachers who find themselves contradicted by either science or history; and that is only because they either won't take the trouble to find out what the Bible really says, or they have made the mistranslation a supposedly sacred church doctrine and now they are stuck with it. Don't let any church shake your faith in the Bible. The Bible is always right, even if the preachers are often wrong.

Let us remember another thing, the Chinese historical record. The Shu-King records that during the reign of King Yao, at a time beginning about the date of Noah's flood, the Hwang Ho River carried excessive floods for three generations. Drainage out of the Tarim Basin to the eastward would have been carried off in the Hwang Ho River and would account for this.

Now we come to another false doctrine taught in many churches. Since nobody survived in all the earth except Noah and his family, everybody now living is a descendant of Noah and related by blood, no matter what race they belong to. We have already seen that the Flood did not cover the whole earth but only one valley about 350 by 650 miles in size. Chinese history was not interrupted by, although they do report purely local floods in the Hwang Ho valley where the waters were draining off. We have seen that Egyptian history is not interrupted by the flood, so the continent of Africa was not touched by it and the Negro Race continued unaffected by it.

It would be absurd to think that Noah and his wife, both of them being white, could have one white child, one Negro child, and one Chinese child. Remember that in Genesis 1:11-25, when God created the world and its inhabitants and made the laws governing their reproduction, He did not make it absurd chaos, with whales giving birth to cattle and fish hatching out of birds' eggs. His law, several times repeated for emphasis, is always that each creature must bring forth strictly "after his own kind".

The churches that teach this false doctrine of everybody being descended from Noah never got it from the Bible, that is in any true translation of the Bible. As Moses wrote it in the Hebrew language, under divine inspiration, the Bible correctly tells that Noah's descendants went out into a world already populated by people who had lived right through the time of the flood and were still going strong.

Ferrar Fenton's Modern English translation gives this correctly. In Genesis 10:1-5, we read of the descendants of Noah's son Japheth, and it says, "From these they spread themselves over the sea coasts of the countries of the nations, each with their language amongst the gentile tribes." Genesis 10:20 tells of the descendants of Noah's son Ham, "These were the sons of Ham, in their tribes and languages, in the regions of the heathen". Genesis 10:31 completes it: "These are the sons of Shem, by their tribes and by their languages, in their countries among the heathen."

So never let anybody tell you that the Bible consists of the fables of a primitive people. It is perfectly consistent with all true science and all true history. It is the history of our race, the Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian and Teutonic White Race.

                                           ADDENDUM

Editor's Note: The distinguishing mark of a real scholar is a continuing desire for additional knowledge and a willingness to cast aside previously held concepts the moment they are found to be false; and the honesty to acknowledge such changes in understanding is most commendable. When Dr. Comparet wrote the foregoing article on Noah's Flood, he placed the Garden of Eden near the headwaters of the present Euphrates River; in other words, in northern Mesopotamia. But he subsequently learned that the Garden of Eden was more likely located in the Pamir Plateau of central Asia, immediately west of the Tarim Basin, and now accepts the views of Frederick Haberman on the subject as being entirely correct: the views expressed in Mr. Haberman's interesting and authoritative book called TRACING YOUR ANCESTORS - and the following is taken from pages 11-14 of that book:

"Our next problem is to discover where the Adamic or Aryan race originated. According to Scripture it began in Eden. But where was Eden? Concerning the location of Eden we read in Genesis 2:10-14: 'And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good: there is bdelhum and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel; that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.' Because the Euphrates is mentioned here, people have assumed that Eden must have been located on the banks of the historic Euphrates river in Mesopotamia; but as the Euphrates and the Tigris merge into one river, the situation in no wise corresponds to the description given in Genesis, which states that one river went out of Eden and divided into four heads. If we wish to accept the Bible statement as descriptive and authoritative, we are compelled td look elsewhere for a group of four rivers originating from one source.

"Such a location of four rivers starting from one source we find on the Pamir plateau in Central Asia, between the Tian Shan mountains on the north and the Hindu Cush on the south. Cush is the original word for Ethiopia and is a word older than the division of languages. From the lakes of that plateau issue four great rivers: the Indus, the Jaxartes, the Oxus, and the Tarim. The Oxus is still called by the natives the Dgihun or Gihon; the Chitral branch of the Indus answers the description of the Pison; the Jaxartes is the original Euphrates; and the Tarim going toward the east is in all probability the Hiddekel.

"Concerning this identification, Prof. S. H. Buchanan on Pages 125 and 126 of his work, The World and the Book, quotes the great French Orientalist, M. Renan: 'If we search to determine the country which best satisfies the geography of the first chapters of Genesis, it is necessary to avow that all conducts us to the region of the Imaus, where the most solid inductions place the cradle of the Aryan race. There is found, as in the Paradise of Genesis, gold, precious stones, bdellium. This point is that of the world of which one is able to say with the most truth that four rivers issue from the same source. Four immense currents of water: the Indus, the Helmend, the Oxus, and the Gaxartes, take there their rise, flowing in directions the most opposite. The second chapter of Genesis presents to us a traditional geography which has no connection with the ordinary geography of the Hebrews; but which on the contrary, offers the most astounding resemblance with the Turanian system. The Pison, which issues from the Garden of Eden, situated in the East, is very probably the high Indus, and the country of Havilah, seems well to be the country of Darada towards Chachmises, celebrated for its riches. The Gihon is the Oxus, and it is without doubt by substitution of more modern names that we find the Tigris and the Euphrates at the side of the other rivers indicated. Thus, all invites us to place the Eden of the Semites at the point of the separation of the waters of Asia; at the umbilic of the world, toward which, as with an index finger, all the races seem to point as that recognized in their most primitive traditions.'

"Sir Gaston Maspero, late director-general of Egyptian Antiquities in his Ancient History of the Orient, also identifies the Pamir plateau as the location of the Garden of Eden. Ris quotation is also taken from Prof. Buchanan's book, Pages 124-125:

"'All have preserved, mixed with the vague legends of their infancy, the memory of a primitive country where their ancestors had lived before their dispersion. This was a high mountain, or better, an immense plateau of a square figure, and so elevated that it seemed as if suspended between the heavens and the earth. From the interior flowed a great river, which soon divided itself into four arms or canals, spreading out over the four surrounding countries. There was the umbilic of the world and the cradle of humanity. The people settled between the Mediterranean and the Tigris located this legendary country in the East. The people of ancient Persia and India conceived its situation in the North. The moderns have succeeded in determining its site more exactly than the ancients had done. They have placed it in the mountains of Belurtag, near the point where the chain unites with the Himalaya. There in effect, and there only, is found a country which satisfies all the geographic descriptions preserved in the sacred books of Asia. From the Plateau of Pamir, or better, from the mountain mass of which this plateau is the center, four great rivers issue, the Indus, the Helmend, the Oxus, and the Gaxartes, which flow in directions the most diverse corresponding sufficiently to the four rivers of tradition.'

"This plateau of Pamir all the people Asia consider to be the original Eden and the central part of the world as Prof. Renan tells us, quoted by Buchanan, Pages 123-124:  'Thus everything invites us to place the Eden of the Semites (Aryans) in the mountains of Belurtag, at the point where this chain unites with the Himalaya, toward the Plateau of Pamir...We are conducted to the same point, according to Brunoff, by the most ancient and authentic texts of the Zend-Avesta. The Hindu traditions also contained in the Mahabharata and the Puranas, converge to the same region. There is the true Meru (Ararat) (of the Hindus), the true Albordj (of the Persians), the true river Arvanda, from which all rivers take their source, according to Persian tradition. There, according to the opinions of almost all the populations of Asia, is the central point of the world, the umbilic, the gate of the universe. There is the uttarakura - 'the country of happiness'  - of which Magesthanes writes. There is, finally the point of common attachment of the primitive geography, both of the Semitic and the Indo-European races.'

"The Pamir plateau of today is of course a different place from what it was five or six thousand years ago. At that time the whole of Asia was lower than it is today; at that time a large inland sea covered the steppes of southern Siberia, of which the Caspian Sea and the Aral Sea are remnants; and over the now frozen steppes of northern Siberia roamed the mammoth and the sabre4oothed tiger. All the indications are that northern Siberia then had a semi-tropical climate, and ideal conditions prevailed on the Pamir Plateau. A study of our map shows that this plateau occupies a unique position; it is called 'the roof of the world' and forms the watershed of Asia. The plateau itself has today an altitude of 15,000 feet, and upon it stand peaks 10,000 feet higher. Four great rivers derive their waters from the valleys or pamirs, the lakes and glaciers of that region. The main branch of the Amu Dana or Oxus forms an outlet to Lake Victoria, several others of its tributaries flowing also from the plateau.. The Oxus is still called by the natives the Gihun. Both the Chitral and the Gilget branches of the Indus have their origin close to Lake Victoria on the southern side of the Pamirs, and so also has the Yarkand River, which together with the Kashgar forms the Tarim River. The Tarim river, as will be seen, has no outlet towards the sea, but disappears in the Tarim Basin at a place that is five hundred feet below sea level. This Tarim Basin is the greatest sinkhole in the world, although it is surrounded by the highest mountain peaks in the world; yet its floor lies in many places below the level of the Indian Ocean, indicating that a great cataclysm tore the earth here in a bygone age.

"The northern branch of the Tarim, the Kashgar River, flows out of the Alai valley on the northern end of the Pamir Plateau and not far from where a branch of the Oxus originates. From the same valley also flows in a northerly direction a branch of the Syr Dana, or Jaxartes River, whose name indicates that it is probably the original Euphrates of the ancients. The Helmend, which Renan and Maspero identify with the Hiddekel does not have its origin on the Pamir plateau, but starts several hundred miles south of it in a valley of the Hindu Kush; but it is probable that the Kashgar river is the original Hiddekel, flowing towards the East.

"Only the Pamir Plateau answers to the geographical couditions described in Genesis 4:10, 'A lake also sprang up in Eden to supply the Garden with waters, and from there it divided and became four rivers' (Fenton translation of the Bible). Such a condition exists nowhere else in Asia, four streams coming from one group of Alpine lakes, which may once have been one lake; and all the people of Asia look with awe to the 'forbidden Pamirs' as the place of the original Paradise. There on the 'roof of the world' is located the mythical Taurus or AIai mountains, the legendary Chinese Qucs Kiu or Lake of Stars and the Rang Kul or Dragon's Lake, from which the Serpent is said to have come.

"Today the Pamir Plateau is uninhabited. Its high altitude of 15,000 feet or more makes it too inhospitable a place to live in: and, covering a territory of about 180 by 180 miles, it forms a blank and mysterious spot on the map of Asia.