CEDAR TREE. 77 



A hundred and twenty-one years after the time of 

 which this traveller speaks, Maundrell reckons only six- 

 teen large trees, but mentions several small ones. He 

 says, that having proceeded for three hours across the 

 plain of Tripoli, he arrived at the foot of Libanus, 

 which continually ascending, with some fatigue, he came, 

 in four hours and a half, to a small village called Eden ; 

 and in two hours and a half more to the Cedars. " These 

 noble trees," continues he, " grow amongst the snow, 

 near the highest part of Libanus, and are remarkable, as 

 well for their own age and largeness, as for the frequent 

 allusions made to them in the Word of God. Here are 

 some very old, and of a prodigious bulk, and others 

 younger, of a smaller size. Of the former, I could 

 reckon up only sixteen ; the latter are very numerous. 

 I measured one of the largest, and found it twelve yards 

 six inches in girth, and yet sound; and thirty-seven 

 yards in the spread of its boughs. At about five or six 

 yards from the ground, it was divided into five limbs, 

 each of which was equal to a great tree*." 



The traveller Le Bruyn reckons about five or six-and- 

 thirty trees remaining on Mount Libanus when he was 

 there, and would insinuate that it is not easy to count 

 them ; as it has been said of the stones at Stonehenge. 



" It is a folly,"" says Thevenot, " to say, that when 

 the cedars of Mount Lebanon are counted several times, 

 their number is found each time to vary ; for there are 

 in all but twenty-three, great and small -f-." 



This author went there about eighty years after 

 Ranwolff, who counted six-and-twenty ; and forty years 



* Maundrcll's Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem, page 142 

 t Thevenot's Voyage <lu Levant, in 1655 ; part i. p. 443; edi- 

 tion 1664. 



