his companion, the Rev. J. King, who omitted the saplings, made the number 321. "I know not," he says,
"why travellers have so long and so generally given twenty-eight, twenty, fifteen, and five, as the number of
the Cedars. It is true, that of those of superior size and antiquity, there are not a greater number, but then
there is a regular gradation in size, from the largest down to the merest sapling." *
The recent evidence of Admiral Washington's expedition, however, proves that this last statement is
inaccurate, and that the older trees can easily be separated from the younger.
The Cedars were visited in 1829 by Dr. Pariset, who in terms rather grandiloquent and sentimental,
gave an account of his visit in a letter to M. Loiseleur Deslongchamps, which was published
by him in his " Histoire du Cedre" in 1837. He says: "The large Cedars, in fact, are very few in
number : I do not think that I counted more than a dozen : I did not measure their circumference, but I
had still before my eyes the columns, which, to the number of nearly one hundred and thirty, fill one of the
halls of the palace of Carnac ; they are nearly 40 feet in girth ; each is very nearly the dimensions of the
large Cedars. . . . As to the smaller Cedars, different in age and shape, I do not think that I say too
much in carrying the number up to four or five hundred."
M. Geramb, a monk of La Trappe, who visited the Grove in 1832, incidentally tells us the number
of the large trees, in refuting the depreciatory remarks of Volney. " Instead of ' four or five thick
trees,' I have counted at least thirteen or fourteen, not only as thick as the thickest trees that I ever
met with in my peregrinations, but so thick that several of them are six or seven fathoms in circumference.
Some at a certain height divide into five or six principal branches, which, issuing from the same stem, form
so many new trees, planted as it were in the trunk, and of such diameter that two men cannot span them." t
In the same year (1832), Lamartine visited the Grove, and his account almost exactly corresponds
with the present state of the Grove. He says : " These trees diminish in number every age.
Travellers formerly countcd thirty or forty—more recently, seventeen ; and at a later date but twelve.
There are now but seven, which, from their massiveness and general appearance, may be fairly presumed
to have existed in Biblical times. . . . There still remains a little grove of young Cedars, appearing
to me to form a group of from four hundred to five hundred trees or shrubs."!
M. Leon de Laborde, the celebrated traveller and artist, travelled through Syria and the East about
the same time ; and in the large work which he published shortly afterwards, his pencil has preserved to
us admirable views of this scenery. After describing the ascent he says, " In less than half an hour we
seat ourselves in the shade of these grand old trees. In former times they covered Lebanon ; now-a-days
they are scattered on three small hillocks, surrounded like an amphitheatre with more elevated summits,
forming a barrel-shaped valley, so that one can only see that clump of trees at some distance from one
direction. An hour before reaching Bechaia the guides had pointed out their tops. This clump of about
four hundred trees detaches itself upon the snow in complete isolation. . . . It is an oasis of Cedars in
the midst of a desert of snow. . . . Here they reign despotically. They are alone, and spread around
them without any mixture the agreeable odour which is peculiar to them. There are no more than seven,
entirely old and very large. One of these is more than 50 feet in circumference." §
Our next authority is M. Laure, an officer in the French Marines, who, in company with the Prince
de Joinville, visited Mount Lebanon in 1836. His father gives an account of his journey in the Cultiva/cur
Provençal, which is quoted by Loiseleur Deslongchamps in his " Histoire du Cedre." " Fifteen of the
sixteen Cedars mentioned by Maundrell are still alive, but are all more or less in a state of decay ; and one
of them is remarkable for three immense trunks proceeding from the same stump, at a short distance above
the soil. Another, one of the healthiest of the old trees, though perhaps the smallest, measured 35 feet 9
* Memoir of the Rev. Pliny Fist, late Missionary lo Palestine. Boston, 1828, p. 327.
5 Voyage de la Syrie, liy Leon de Laborde. Puis, 1S37, p. 31.
inches
inches in circumference. All the trees are much furrowed by lightning, which seems to strike them more
or less every year. In the midst of these old trees, are about forty other Cedars, comparatively young
though the trunk of the smallest of them is from 10(012 feet in circumfcrencc It is not alone at
Lebanon that Cedars are found. Above the village of Ehden one sees large trees, which the distance does
not permit one to recognise, but which the natives affirm to be Cedars. There is not one young Cedar
in all the wood of El Herze." *
Lord Lindsay, in the same year (1836), passed through the Grove on his way back from Baalbec and
Anti-Libanus. He says: " Several generations of Cedars, all growing promiscuously together, compose this
beautiful Grove. The younger are very numerous; the second-rate would form a noble wood of themselves,
were even the patriarchal dynasty quite extinct: one of them, by no means the largest, measures 19I feet in
circumference, and, in repeated instances, two, three and four large trunks spring from a single root; but
they have all a fresher appearance than the patriarchs, and straighter stems, straight as young Palm trees.
Of the giants there are seven standing very near each other, all on the same hill—three more a little farther
on, nearly in a line with them. And in a second walk of discovery after my companions had lain down
to rest, I had the pleasure of detecting two others, low down on the northern edge of the Grove—twelve,
therefore, in all, of which the ninth from the south is the smallest; but even that bears tokens of antiquity
coeval with its brethren. The stately bearing and graceful repose of the young Cedars contrasts singularly
with the wild aspect and frantic attitude of the old ones, flinging abroad their knotted and muscular
limbs like so many Laocoons, while others, broken off, lie rotting at their feet; but life is strong in
them all." t
Monsieur Eusebe de Salle, who describes himself as the First Interpreter of the African Army, visited
the Cedars about 1838. He describes them as "scattered over three or four hillocks, which may be a
quarter of a league square in extent. In arriving from the west, one meets at first, or, rather, one leaves
to the left, four or five old gnarled trees, which seem to act as sentinels before the principal group. The
guides make you arrive under the shade of the five or six most antient Cedars. . . . To explain the
diversity in the numbers of trees reckoned by travellers at different times, at periods many of them very
near each other, during which a knotty, muscular and contorted tree could certainly not have had time
to grow, let us say that the trunks of most of the old trees are not perfectly well defined. There is one that
may be counted either for one, or two, or three trees soldered together by long vicinity. . . . But I ought
to add that the principal group of these Nestors is not the only group. To the west and north of the
cluster we find several which have already the appearance of age, and on the bark of which the names
of travellers form long dynasties."!
The Rev. Dr. Fisk, Prebendary of Lichfield, visited "the Grove" in 1841, and thus describes them :
" On nearing the Cedars the clump assumes the stateliness of a forest. The young trees which skirt the
plantation are noble specimens, and justly claim our admiration. We wound our way through the midst of
them with the ' smell of Lebanon' about us, and soon reached those venerable trees which have received
the reverence of ages. The antient ones are twelve in number, seven of them clustered together, and the
other five at various parts of the Grove. I did not measure the girth of any, but I felt their gigantic
proportions while reclining beneath their shade. And are these the trees—the very trees of which Solomon
spake; and which have supplied the inspired penmen with imagery to symbolise spiritual dignity and the
glory which is of righteousness—why should they not be ? I know not. Certainly they bear traces of the
lapse of ages upon ages. They appear as old as Lebanon itself—as if they had never been seedlings. If
they are not the very trees, surely they have sprung from the seeds of the most antient ones. The seven
which are clustered together go up like gigantic pillars, and their interlaced arms above—each in itself a
* Laure in Cultivates Proven;»!. Vol. L p. 317.
t Letters from Egypt, Edom, and the Holy Land, by Lord IJndsay. London. 4th cd. (1847), p. 349-
. — j r p - - • ' vast