"From Augustine onwards, through the writings of Eucherius of Lyons [_Commentary on Genesis_], of St. Basil the Great, and many others, something of this tendency to compromise between the literal meaning of Scripture and the tacit opposition of geography, may be traced in this attempt to give reality to the earthly Paradise; and the same comes out in the conjecture of Severian of Gabala, adopted by Cosmas and by many of the traditionalists, that the rivers of Eden dived under the earth for a long space before reappearing in our world as Nile, Euphrates, Tigris and Pison (Severian of Gabala, v, 6; according to S., this subterranean course was to prevent men from tracking their way up to Paradise; cf. _Philostorgius_, III, 7-12.) "Homeric and other pre-Christian fancies led many in the early Christian period still to look for Paradise in the north, among the Upper Boreans, in the south among the blameless Ethiopians, or in the west in the Isles of the Blessed, of the Hesperides, or of Fortune. Thus Capella, who was probably a pagan survival at the beginning of the most brilliant age of patristic literature, naturally enough looks for his Elysium 'where the axis of the world is ever turning' at the northern pole [_Capella_, vi, 664]; but when we find Archbishop Basil of Novgorod speculating about a Paradise in the White Sea [see Karamsin's _Russian History_, as cited by Marinelli, _Erdkunde_, p. 22, note 84; and by Cardinal Zurla, _Vantaggi derivati alla Geografia_, etc., p. 44] we have a better illustration of the undying vigour of the oldest and most poetic of physical myths, under almost any changes of politics and religion."] [Endnote 138: (p. 176). _Or else upon their feathers for the rest of the time ... other fish._--[This bird is the _Phœnicopterus_.]--S. _Ibid_: _Other birds_, etc.--[See note 128 to p. 156, on the _Buceros Africanus_.]--S. _Ibid_: _Other fish._--[This is the _Pristis_.]--S.] [Endnote 139: (p. 176). _Quite alive._--[This fish appears to be the _Remora_.]--S.] [Endnote 140: (p. 176). _The two palm trees, etc._--[These palm trees exist on some old MS. maps. We may compare this passage with what the author says in ch. xxxi, and with the notes on pp. 96, 177; also Introduction, p. iv. Barros (_Decade I_, ch. xiii) says "Lancerote reached the two palm trees which Dinis Fernandez, when he went there, marked out as a feature worthy of notice ... where the natives of the land say the Azanegue Moors are divided from the idolatrous Negroes." And, in fact, the course of this stream forms a remarkable boundary between the Moors, or Berbers, who inhabit the northern bank, and the Negro Jaloffs who dwell on the southern bank (see _Durand_, vol. ii, p. 60, and _Rennell_, Appendix, p. 80).]--S.] [Endnote 141: (p. 177). _This green land._--[On the manuscript map of João Freire of 1546, appears marked at the entrance of the river Senegal, the "arvoredo" of which Azurara speaks.]--S.]