Biblia innocentium Author:John William Mackail Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE GARDEN OF EDEN THE whole earth then was fresh, green, and bright; no rain fell, but a mist rose from the earth daily and watered the ground... more ». But in all the earth the most beautiful place was the Garden of Paradise, which God planted eastward in Eden. A wall ran all round it, with one gate that looked to the rising sun. Inside it a river rose out of the ground, that watered the garden, and then parted into four streams that ran into the four quarters of the world. The first of the four rivers was Pison, which flowed south through Havilah, the land of gold and spice and precious stones ; the second was Gihon, which ran west and flowed into the land of the blacks ; the third was Hiddekel, which went eastward into Asia; and the fourth was Euphrates. Paradise was planted with every kind of tree that is lovely in leaf, or good for fruit ; and in the middle of it two trees grew side by side and rose higher than all the rest, one the tree of the Knowledge of good and evil, the other the tree of Life. In this garden God put the man whom he had created, whose name was Adam, and gave the keeping of it into his charge. All the beasts and birds came in pairs before Adam in the garden, and worshipped him as their master, and he gave them each their own name. But he himself was alone in the garden, and had no companion. Then God made a deep sleep fall on him, and as he slept, took out one of his ribs and closed up the flesh again, and made the rib into a woman; then he brought her to Adam and woke him again out of sleep. Adam at once knew that the woman was sent him to be his wife. He called her Eve, the mother; and Adam and Eve lived in Paradise together, and were without sin or fear or shame. God gave Adam leave to eat the fruit of all the trees in the garden except t...« less