It is the Slavratta, ‘the celestial earth,’ of the Hindoo, the summit of his golden mountain Meru, the city of Brahma, in the centre of Jambadwipa, and from the four sides of which gush forth the four primeval rivers, reflecting in their passage the colorific glories of their source, and severally flowing northward, southward, eastward, and westward.”

It is the Garden of Eden of the Hebrews: 

“And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.  And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  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 bdellium 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.  And the Lord God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.”  (Gen. ii., 8-1-5.)

As the four rivers named in Genesis are not branches of any one stream, and head in very different regions, it is evident that there was an attempt, on the part of the writer of the Book, to adapt an ancient tradition concerning another country to the known features of the region in which he dwelt.

Josephus tells us (chap. i., p. 41), “Now the garden (of Eden) was watered by one river, which ran round about the whole earth, and was parted into four parts.”  Here in the four parts we see the origin of the Cross, while in the river running around the whole earth we have the wonderful canal of Atlantis, described by Plato, which was “carried around the whole of the plain,” and received the streams which came down from the mountains.  The streams named by Josephus would seem to represent the migrations of people from Atlantis to its colonies.  “Phison,” he tells us, “denotes a multitude; it ran into India; the Euphrates and Tigris go down into the Red Sea while the Geon runs through Egypt.”

We are further told (chap. ii., p. 42) that when Cain, after the murder of.  Abel, left the land of Adam, “he travelled over many countries” before he reached the land of Nod; and the land of Nod was to the eastward of Adam’s home.  In other words, the original seat of mankind was in the West, that is to say, in the direction of Atlantis.  Wilson tells us that the Aryans of India believed that they originally came “from the West.”  Thus the nations on the west of the Atlantic look to the east for their place of origin; while on the east of the Atlantic they look to the west:  thus all the lines of tradition converge upon Atlantis.