General Charles `Chinese' Gordon supported the theory that Africa and India used to be part of one massive continent. While on a survey expedition for the British government in the Indian Ocean, he came upon Praslin Island in the Seychelles group. So enchanted was he by this island, and by its Vallée de Mai in particular, that he became convinced that this was the location of the original Garden of Eden. The clincher for Gordon was the existence on Praslin of the coco-de-mer, a rare and exotic tree, which is native to only one other island of the Seychelles and which Gordon concluded was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.