He happened to read the chronicle--and was hardly surprised at what he saw, for the route west to "the
isles of the blessed" detailed in Brendan's account was substantially the very route the wartime U.S.
Other examples are Puguang's
Isles of the Blessed (Yuan Dynasty), depicting the mountains in a long handscroll floating on the waves of a turbulent sea, and Wang Yun's The Fanghu Isle of the Immortals, dated 1699, which shows the sacred mountain on an island, which was described in a Daoist text as early as 400 BC (the Liezs): "The towers and terraces upon [the mountain] are all gold and jade, the beasts and birds are all unsullied white: trees of pearl and garnet always grow densely ...
A utopian longing for peace shows up in the variety of visions of the
Isles of the Blessed, Paradise, and similar havens of delight that inhabit every human tradition.
A similar description was given by Hesiod of the
Isles of the Blessed. In the earlier authors, only those specially favored by the gods entered Elysium and were made immortal.
Before Hiawatha takes his leave of the tribe to go to the
Isles of the Blessed, he tells his people to heed those who will come with a new religion.
