e a garden of the Lord?

The answer, as they say in Parliament, where no one could be expected to
give a downright and straightforward "yes" or "no," is in the
affirmative. The scenes of these early dramas are characteristically
Mesopotamian. The well-ordered garden "planted" with the tree of life
"in the midst," and a river to water it, the ark of Noah pitched "within
and without with pitch" as the ancient goufa is still pitched, the Tower
of Babel, built with brick instead of stone and with slime (_i.e._
bitumen) for mortar--all these things belong to the flat, sun-baked
lands of this alluvial plain. At Kurna, Arab tradition has placed Eve's
Tree. It is a sorry looking, scraggy thing. It does not seem good for
food, nor is it pleasant for the eyes and a tree to be desired. Another
traditional Garden of Eden is at Amara, and the Eden of the Sumerian
version of the story is thought by Sir William Willcocks to have been on
the Euphrates between Anah and Hit.

[Illustration: SUNSET ON THE TIGRIS]

The "planting" of the garden and certain details brought out in the
short description of its features suggest very strongly the things that
would occur to the mind of a writer living in an irrigated country.
Milton's gorgeous backgrounds are almost entirely northern. He has
striven to give it an eastern touch here and there, but such stage
management consists chiefly in bringing in a few palms from the
greenhouse. His description "of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides
with thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild," and "of that steep savage
hill," are entirely northern in feeling. The same northern wildness
pervades the garden. Note the "flowers worthy of Paradise, which not
nice Art in beds and curious knots, but Nature boon poured forth profuse
on hill and dale and plain." In irrigation lands like Mesopotamia it is
the combination of great heat and abundant water that makes for
luxuriant growth. Milton conceives the most romantic and wild scenery on
hill and dale and savage defile, suddenly brought into order for the use
of man. The Bible story speaks only of features to be found in a land
like Babylonia. Sir William Willcocks thinks that the word translated
"mist" would probably be better rendered "inundation," and that the
writer is speaking of a country where inundation rather than rainfall
was the support of life to the vegetable world. Genesis ii. 5 and 6
would then read:

"For the Lord God had not caused it to rain u