est mont de liesse et joeundité car sur ces monticules croissent les vins excellens que communément sont
cause de joye inductive à liesse." But he does not say anything about the numbers of the Cedars.*
The next is Martinus à Baumgarten in Braidenbach, a German knight, who passed and saw the
snowy peaks of Mount Lebanon, in a pilgrimage through the Holy Land, on 31st January 1508, and
speaks of its being full of Cedars, Pines, and other noble trees ; but he does not appear to have visited the
Grove, nor does he mention the number of the trees.f
There is a blank of above forty years before we have further accounts. Those we next get are from
Pierre Belon, or Bellonius, previously mentioned. When he visited the Grove he counted the Cedars,
and tells us that they are supposed to amount to twenty-eight in number, although it is difficult to count
them, they being a few paces distant from each other (Belon, op. cit., p. 153).
The next references which we have met with are a quotation in Celcius, in which it is stated that
Christopher Fischtner, in 1556, counted twenty-five trees,Î and that Turner, in 1565, also found the trees
to be twenty-five in number. We have been unable to verify either of these statements, not having
discovered the works from which they are taken.
About the same time (1566) the Grove was visited by Christopher Furer of Haimendorf, whose
quality does not appear ; but from his name, and the city (Nuremberg) where his book was published in
1621, we imagine him to have been a German ; and from his Latinity and knowledge of Pliny, either a
priest or an educated gentleman (according to the learning of the time). " The crests of Lebanon," says
he, "although covered with snow, have still to this day some Cedars, in number about twenty-five,
regarding which a vulgar belief has obtained, that the Cedars of Lebanon cannot be counted, which
arises from there being sometimes several trunks to the same tree, so that to those counting them the
trees appear now fewer." §
In 1574, Rauwolf speaks of twenty-four trees, and, what is important, he states that he looked for
but could find no young ones.J
This absence of young ones gives us a date from which to start for the smaller specimens, now
composing the major part of the Grove. They must be younger than three hundred years.
The next authority in point of date is Johannes Jacobi, who is said by Celcius to have counted the trees
in 1579, and to have found twenty-six, of which two were dead, and one had only a single branch alive.IT
Radzivil, a (Polish?) prince or duke, and a knight of Jerusalem, visited the Cedars while on a
pilgrimage to Jerusalem, in 1583, of which he published an account in 1614. He also found the trees
twenty-four in number.**
Signor Zuallardo (or Zuallart, as he is styled by his French contemporaries), an Italian knight of
the most Holy Sepulchre, made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1586, and visited Lebanon on the way.
He says, " Here still grow some Cedars, of those of which many were used in constructing the temple
and other buildings which the kings, David and Solomon, built in Jerusalem, and of which twenty-three
others, very old, still stand, spreading wide their branches."tt
The Seigneur de Villamont visited the Cedars in 1590. In reference to the number of trees he
says : " In consequence of what I had been told, that in counting them no one could ascertain the number,
I wished to try the experiment myself three or four times, on all of which I have found always more or less.
At the same time, I should say that, so far as I could judge, there are about twenty-four or twenty-five." ÎÎ
Father Jerome Dandini, an Italian Jesuit, who was sent to the Holy Land in the quality of Apostolic
Nunc,o by Pope Clement VIII., in the year 1599. published a small volume devoted to Mount
Lebanon and the Maron.tes, but says very little about the Cedars. He set off in May , 5 9 9 and
arrived at Tripoli on the 29th of August, whence he went to the Grove and counted twenty-three 'trees ;
but another of the company only made them twenty-one.*
The next authority is an English one, an old book by W. Biddulph, intitled "The Travels of Four
Englishmen and a Preacher" (London, ,612). They bring the number of Cedars up again to twenty-four.
Monsieur de Breves, who saw the Cedars in 1605, also found them twenty-four in number, "in a
tolerably spacious situation, stretched between the summits of the mountains, but rugged and full of mounds,
scattered here and there." t
Monsieur de Beauvais, a French nobleman, is the next in date who speaks of the Cedars; but he
does not appear to have seen them, nor does he give the date of his visit, but it must have been shortly
before 1615. He visited the Patriarch of Mount Lebanon ; but although so near, had not the curiosity
to go to the Cedars, notwithstanding that he was pressed to do so by the Patriarch. "We stayed one
day in this house, and afterwards the said Patriarch wished to conduct us himself fifteen miles beyond
it, to shew us twenty-three Cedars, which he assured us to have been there in the time of Solomon."!
A few years later, William Lithgow, in his curious peregrination in Europe, Asia, and Africa,
tells how the Grove stood about 1614: "The daily interrogation I had here (Tripoly) for a caravan's
departure to Aleppo was not to me a little fastidious, being mindful to visit Babylon. In this my expectation,
I tooke purpose with three Venetian merchants to go to the Cedars of Lebanon, which was but a
day's journey thither When we arrived to the place where the Cedars grow, we saw but twentyfour
of all, growing after the manner of Oke trees, but a great deale taler, straighter, and greater, and the
branches grew so straight out as though they were kept by art. . . . The nature of that tree is alwaies
green, yielding an odoriferous smell, and an excellent kind of fruit like unto apples, but of a sweeter
taste and more holesome digestion [!] The roots of some of the Cedars are almost destroyed by
shepherds, who have made fires thereat, and holes wherein they sleep; yet neverthelesse, they flourish
green above the tops and branches."?
Our next authority is the Rev. Father P. Philippius, a barefooted Carmelite Friar of the Order of the
Most Holy Trinity, who visited the Cedars in 1629. He gives his account in very choice Latin, and
describes them most accurately and clearly. " In Libanus," says he, "several of our European trees are
found. The Cedar is peculiar to it, a tree celebrated in Sacred Scripture for its incorruptibility and size, and
especially mentioned because employed in making that most magnificent temple of Solomon, for which it
was conveyed from Lebanon on floats by sea. It is almost at the top of this mountain that the Cedars are
produced, which the natives call A rs, in a tolerably broad flat place, defended from the north by the ridge
of the mountain, and exposed to the south. There are one-and-twenty of the very large and oldest
distinguishable; one had fallen a short time previously, and as yet appeared half burned ; but, among the
small ones, recently sprung seedlings are to be seen in every direction in the same plain." «
Three Norman gentlemen, Messieurs Fermanel, Fauvel, Baudouin de Lannay, and a Fleming,
M. de Stockhove, are the next who have left a record of a visit to the Cedars. They were there in 1630,
and there is an account of their journey published in 1670. They say: "We arrived at night at the place
where are the Cedar trees, so renowned and so did, that many believe that they are of the time of King
Solomon. In truth, nothing can be seen more antient than these trees : they have the trunk so large, that
five persons could scarcely embrace one. . . . Some say that these trees cannot be counted, and that one
1 Relation Journalier
§ A most dclcctable :
Lithgow, SrotK, London. I
always