130 TREE-PLANTING. 



Many modern travellers have recorded their visits 

 to Lebanon, and the number left of the old trees has 

 been the occasion of a difference of opinion. Elliot 

 Warburton, in his entertaining book " The Crescent 

 and the Cross," thus describes his visit to the cedars 

 of Lebanon : " To the right lay a black amphitheatre 

 of naked mountains, and in the recess that they 

 surrounded stood a grove of dark trees these were 

 the cedars of Lebanon. I was at first disappointed in 

 the appearance of these trees ; I had expected to 

 have seen them scattered over the mountain that they 

 consecrated, each standing like a vegetable cathedral ; 

 but here was a snug compact little brotherhood, 

 gathered together in the most formal group. No other 

 tree was visible for many a mile around. 



"When, however, I reached the forest after two 

 hours' steep and difficult descent, I found my largest 

 expectations realised, and confessed that it was the 

 most magnificent specimen of forestry that I had ever 

 seen. I was delighted to pass out of the glowing 

 fiery sunshine, into the cool refreshing gloom of those 

 wide flaky branches that vast cedar shade, whose 

 gnarled old stems stood round like massive pillars 

 supporting their ponderous domes of foliage. 



"One of the greatest charms of this secluded 

 forest must have been its deep solitude ; but that, 

 alas ! is gone forever : some monks obtained the 

 ground for building, and an unsightly chapel was just 

 being raised upon this sacred spot. I must confess it 

 seemed to me like a desecration ; the place already 

 was ' holy ground ' to all the world, and these ignorant 

 monks had come to monopolise and claim it for the 

 tawdry and tinselled image which they had s just 



