sailors' yarns, lost nothing in the telling. We have seen reason to identify the Chinese Elysium with certain Islands of the Japanese Archipelago; classical geographers evidently traced the Western conception to Madeira or the Canaries,[1] or perhaps to the Azores.
Why, it may be asked, did mystery continue for so long to surround both island groups? In the Far East the explanation is not to be found solely in the Chinese apathy towards geographical discovery so strikingly exemplified in their ignorance about Formosa up to quite recent years, though probably this factor contributed to the long life of the overseas Elysium conception. The proximate cause lay, I fancy, in the vested interests of the chief propagators of the notion—the professional Taoists, who naturally were loth to allow the veil to be torn aside from what was to them a source of livelihood only so long as it remained mysterious. Besides, they were anxious not to lose a safe asylum in case changes of fortune obliged them to flee the country.
This wilful suppression of fact had a striking parallel on the other side of the world, though motives differed. Diodorus[2] tells how the Phoenicians discovered an island having such perfect natural conditions that it seemed "the abode of gods rather than of men," It was in mid-ocean to the west of Libya, and contrary to their intention they had been carried thither by an adverse wind. From them the Etrurians heard of it, and proposed to plant a colony there. But the Carthaginians vetoed the project, fearing lest the attractions of the island might rob them of their citizens, and wishing to keep secret such a ready refuge in adversity. In a book attributed to Aristotle[3] the story is much the same, save that a Carthaginian colony is stated to have settled on the island, and that further immigration was forbidden on pain of death.
