Fra Mauro, a religious cosmographer of the fifteenth century, gives on the east side of a map of the world a representation which shows us that at that epoch the "garden of delights" had become very barren. It is a vast plain, on which we see Jehovah and the first human couple, with a circular rampart surrounding it. The four rivers flow out of it by bifurcating. An angel protects the principal gate, which cannot be reached but by crossing barren mountains. The cosmographical map of Gervais, dedicated to the Emperor Otho IV., shows the terrestrial paradise in the centre of the earth, which is square, and is situated in the midst of the seas. Adam and Eve appear in consultation. The map of the world prepared by Andreas Bianco, in the fifteenth century, represents Eden, Adam and Eve, and the tree of life. On the left, on a peninsula, are seen the reprobated people of Gog and Magog, who are to accompany Antichrist. Alexander is also represented there, but without apparent reason. The paradisaical peninsula has a building on it with this inscription, "Ospitius Macarii." Formalconi says, on this subject, that a certain Macarius lives near paradise, who is a witness to all that the author states, and as Bianco has indicated, his cell was close to the gates of paradise. This legend has reference to the pilgrims of St. Macarius, a tradition that was spread on the return of the Crusaders, of three monks who undertook a voyage to discover the point where the earth and heaven meet, that is to say, the place of the terrestrial paradise. The map of Rudimentum, a vast compilation published at Luebeck in 1475 by the Dominican Brocard, represents the terrestrial paradise surrounded by walls, but it is less sterile that in the last picture, as may be seen on the next page. In the year 1503, when Varthema, the adventurous Bolognian, went to the Indies by the route of Palestine and Syria, he was shown the evil-reputed house which Cain dwelt in, which was not far from the terrestrial paradise. Master Gilius, the learned naturalist who travelled at the expense of Francis I., had the same satisfaction. The simple faith of our ancestors had no hesitation in accepting such archaeology. [Illustration: FIG. 54.--THE PARADISE OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.] The most curious and interesting of all attempts to discover the situation of paradise was that made half unconsciously by Columbus when he first found the American shore.