always finds one or two more or less. Il is true that they are a little difficult to eount, because they he m
two small valleys and on a little mound of earth. Nevertheless, we counted them several times, and always
found twenty-two, and one newly fallen, which had been burned towards the foot by the shepherds, who
often bring their flocks there."* , , ,, , . , ,
M Eugene Roger, a Roman Catholic missionary, both counted and measured the Cedars about ,636.
•• in the midst of this plain are the Cedars of which Holy Scripture makes ment,on, which are in number
twenty-two standing, which they say to have been since the creation of the world, and that God transplanted
them as says the Prophet, ' Cedrus Libani quas plantav.t Dominus;' and if it be objected that the Deluge,
having inundated the whole earth, could not have spared this place, since it even destroyed the earthly
Paradise, and caused all plants to die, even the Tree of Life, it is true; but the Cedar being endowed by
God with a gummy quality, this gam being very pure and bitter, conserves the wood without suffering
putrefaction, which preserved them in that universal inundation. . . . Besides these twenty-two Cedars, which
are standing, there are also two of the same antiquity, which are on the ground, w.thout leaves or h i t , but
still without corruption, although it has been more than a hundred years since they were la.d low by the
Arabs It is these twenty-four Cedars which are called the Holy Cedars, at the feet of five of which
the Maronites have raised altars There is also a forest of Cedars three leagues from this, near Thadet
[probably the one at El Hadith], which is where the King Solomon caused them to be cut for the
construction of the Temple of Jerusalem. In like manner, around the twenty-four sainted Cedars there
is like a little shrubbery of young Cedars, which proceed from the seeds which fall from the fruits, and of
which the largest are only two or three feet in thickness." +
M. de Monconys, a French traveller, visited the Cedars in 1647, on his return from Damascus and
Baal bee, and says: "There may have been twenty-five or thirty. There are some very large trees, of
which the base is divided into three or four large trunks, but they only form one tree." t
Thevenot, who in 1655 visited Lebanon, writes : » It is folly to say that when one counts the Cedars
of Lebanon twice, one finds a different number; for there is, in all of them, only twenty-three, large and
small."® . ,
Castillo, a Spanish priest and apostolic preacher of some eminence, who made a pilgrimage to the
Holy Land about the middle of the seventeenth century, speaks of the Cedars as objects of interest, but
gives no details regarding them. 11
In 1666, the same number as was found by Thevenot (twenty-three) remained, according to the
relation of the Chevalier D'Arvieux, who counted them in company with several persons, who all arrived at
the same number. 11
Between the years 1666 and 1669, a German priest. Brother Ferdinand von Troilo, travelled through
the East, and saw the Cedars. He says nothing definite of their number, and little of their size, but
alludes to the supposed impossibility of counting the trees, and explains it by some of the trees having their
main stem almost covered with the earth, and four, five, or six large trunks proceeding out of it, which are
counted each as a tree by some; while, by others, they are reckoned only as the branches of one tree."
A few years later, in 167s, Cornelius Le Brun, or Le Bruyn, as his name is sometimes written (converted
by Loudon, through a clerical error, into La Brayere), a Flemish traveller, visited the Cedars. He
is one of the few authors who happens to have made the visit in the winter time; and we thus have from
him a personal account of the climate to which the Cedars are exposed during the severer portion of each
year, and are able to contrast it with that at the present day. He gives two plates shewing the trees
covered
covered with snow, and himself in the act of plucking the cones. " I did not content myself with taking
the fruit, but I also cut down a young tree, of which there are several, in order to carry off some wood. It
is a thing commonly said, and which has, as it were, passed into a proverb, that one cannot count the
Cedars of Lebanon; that is to say. that when, after having counted them once, and found a certain number,
and we wished to count them a second time, we shall not find the same number that we found the first
time; and, in fact, I have experienced it myself: for, on once counting the most remarkable, I found them
thirty-five the first time, and thirty-six the second. But I only attribute that difference to the haste with
which I counted them, and perhaps, also, to their being somewhat mixed and confused among each other,
which makes it very easy to mistake." *
In 1679 Gabriel Bremond published an account of his travels in these countries/ which is referred to
by M. Loiseleur, but which we have been unable to meet with. Loiseleur's reference to it does not relate
to the number of the trees, but only to the general belief in their antiquity, viz., that they date back to
Adam. In 1680 Von der Groben found only eighteen extremely old ones. He says of Lebanon:
" This is a lofty mountain decorated with various trees and fine gardens. Among the trees are the wellknown
and renowned Cedars often spoken of in history. Owing to its height this mountain is in many
parts clothed with snow, both summer and winter. It has many fertile plains and valleys ; hut in many
parts, more especially where the Cedars stand, it is desert and unfruitful. To see the Cedars we ascended
the mountain. Of the large extremely old Cedars there stand at the present only eighteen. They are
green summer and winter, the same as the Fir trees. This tree neverrots, and has a pleasant odour. The
fruit is like a Fir cone, but larger and thicker." t
Within a few years after this, two or three of the trees seem to have fallen; for La Roque, rather a
celebrated traveller, who had visited Arabia and Palestine, and Syria, and published accounts of his
journeys, visited the Cedars in 16SS, and found then only twenty large trees. "We rested for two hours,
and dined in the midst of this little forest. It is composed of twenty Cedars of a prodigious size, and such
as there is no comparison to make with the finest Planes, Sycamores, and other large trees which we have
hitherto seen. Besides these principal Cedars, one sees a sufficient number of smaller ones, and others
very small—the former placed indifferently among the first, and the others in the outskirts, separated, as it
were, into little troops. . . . The largest Cedar which we measured was, about the middle of its
trunk, 6 feet 10 inches in girth [this should probably be 36 feet 10 inches—the figure 3 having evidently
dropped out while the work was printing], and all the spread of its branches, sufficiently easy to measure,
because they formed the perfect figure of a large circle, with a circumference of about 120 feet.
Still more of the trees seem to have fallen during the next ten years, reducing the number to sixteen.
The account given by Maundrell in 1696 is as follows: " Here are some of them veiy old, and of a prodigious
bulk; and others younger, of a smaller size. Of the former, I could reckon only about sixteen.
The latter were very numerous." 1
A French priest, Brother Felix Beaugrand, visited them (or appears to claim to have done so) at
about the same time as Maundrell, but the number seen by him differs. He says, " One sees seven or
eight of them, which they believe to have existed from the beginning of the world. They are so large
that four men could not embrace them."T The inference to he drawn is, that he had not been there
himself, but wrote from hearsay.
Mons. Paul Lucas, who passed from Tripoli to Sidon in 1714, says, "The reader will cxpect without
doubt that one sees many Cedars still; and I ought to tell him here that one sees very fine ones near
Tripoli, but that none are to be found now on the side of Sidon, where formerly there had been many." **