_Asiatic Researches_, vol. vi. p. 497. Wilford appears to have borrowed largely from that ancient store-house (as the Hindu would call it) of learning, Sir Walter Raleigh’s _History of the World_. He combines, however, much of what that great man had so singularly acquired and condensed, with what he himself collected, and with the aid of imagination has formed a curious mosaic. But when he took a peep into “the chorographical description of the Terrestrial Paradise,” I am surprised he did not separate the nurseries of mankind before and after the flood. There is one passage, also, of Sir Walter Raleigh which would have aided his hypothesis, that Eden was in Higher Asia, between the common sources of the Jihun and other grand rivers: the abundance of the _Ficus Indica_, or bar-tree, sacred to the first lord, Adnath or Mahadeva. “Now for the tree of knowledge of good and evil, some men have presumed further; especially Gorapius Bocanus, who giveth himself the honour to have found out the kind of this tree, which none of the writers of former times could ever guess at, whereat Gorapius much marvelleth.” ——“Both together went Into the thickest wood; there soon they chose The fig tree; not that kind for fruit renowned, But such as at this day, to Indians known In Malabar or Decan, spreads her arms Branching so broad and long, that in the ground The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow About the mother tree, a pillar’d shade High overarched, and echoing walks between. There oft the Indian herdsman, shunning heat, Shelters in cool and tends his pasturing herds.” ——“Those leaves They gathered, broad as Amazonian targe.” _Paradise Lost_, Book ix. 1100 ff.