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NOT ALL EARLY MODERN EUROPEANS believed that the earthly paradise-if it in fact existed-was located in the New World. But some did. Its location had always been the object of speculation. The author of Mandeville's Travels located it east of the empire of Prester John and the islands where dog-sized ants busily gathered gold. Prudently disavowing firsthand knowledge, Mandeville instead relays the wisdom of others, describing how the "Paradys Terrestre" was "the highest place of erthe that is in alle the world," as it would have needed to be to survive Noah's flood intact.1 This version of paradise's protuberant topography famously reappears in Columbus' narrative of his third voyage. During his transatlantic journeys, Columbus observed changes in the environment as he approached the Americas. The air became milder and the waters congested with a kind of vegetation "full offrait." He also noted irregular compass readings, as though the earth sloped upward. Columbus concluded that the earth was not perfectly spherical but rather pear-shaped, or "like a very round ball, and on one part of it is placed something like a woman's nipple."2 At the highest point, he asserted, sat the earthly paradise.3
Columbus' latter-day readers have smiled at the credulity of a man whose exploits were to have such a profound impact on world history. They have speculated that his disappointment at failing to produce the commercial riches of the Indies led him to claim a discovery with spiritual significance that outweighed any earthly measure. Although Columbus thought that he could map the location of paradise, he acknowledged that it would be impossible to ascend the perpetual torrent that flowed from the tip of the global pear-stalk to reach the garden itself, "save by the will of God."4 Surely such a feat would be worthy of the sign of divine favor greater than any honorific an earthly monarch could confer (or take back). Apart from any personal motive, however, Columbus' farfetched conjecture about the essential elusiveness of paradise reflects the restless energy of the European global expansion.
The idea of earthly paradise has always served as a repository for individual and cultural preoccupations and desires.5 Although few followed Columbus in believing that the newly "discovered" Americas contained paradise itself, many frequently looked at the New...