Canadian Forcslrij Journal, Januaiij, 1!H'. 



923 



▼" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" "" " ' " ' — uii "It IIU III 



'" "" "*■ "" '" ■■ '■ ■■ ■••• 



l- 



The Ancient Cedars of Lebanon 



By Guij E. Mitchell 



The great Cedars of Lebanon are 

 among the mosl interesting living 

 records of the past. The grove which 

 is standing to-day is the remnant 

 of the same forest from which the 

 cedars were cut and hewn for the 

 building of the Temple at Jerusalem 

 by Solomon. There are many re- 

 ferences to the Cedars of Lebanon 

 in the Old Testament, the most 

 notable in First Kings, where it is 

 stated that through the cooperation 

 of Hiram, the King of Tyre, Solomon 

 brought great rafts of cedar from 

 Lebanon to Joppa and carried them 

 up the steep mountain-sides to 

 Jerusalem for the first temple. In 

 the building of the second temple, 

 under Ezra and Nehemiah, the tim- 

 bers were procured from the same 

 cedar forest on the slopes of Mount 

 Lebanon. At an earlier period the 

 Psalmist refers to the Cedars as the 

 ornament of Lebanon and one of the 

 great glories of God's creative power 

 and wisdom. Pliny, the Greek 

 naturalist, named the species Ccdrus 

 magna, meaning "great." 



The impressive thing about this 

 ancient grove of cedars is the know- 

 ledge that the oldest and largest of 

 them were undoubtedly living at the 

 time when' the timbers of their im- 

 mediate predecessors supported the 

 Temple, They are upwards of 2000 

 years old, not so old as the great 

 Sequoias of our Pacific Coast, but 

 still very ancient. At present there 

 are only about 400 trees left, all very 

 large and old. The best preserved 

 are about 100 feet high and one has a 

 circumference of 47 feet. The grove 

 is now protected by a well-built, high 

 stone wall; but all the balance of the 

 great cedar forest of Lebanon has 

 succumbed to the greed of man, and 

 the grove stands like an oasis in the 

 desert. 



In considering the otherwise ab- 

 solute destruction of the forest over 

 the entire mountain-side, one cannot 



help but wonder why this group 

 has been preserved. A probable 

 explanation is found in the name of 

 the stream at the foot of the moun- 

 tain — the Kadisha — which rises in 

 the moraine left by the great glacier 

 which swept down from the summit 

 of Lebanon and on which the Cedars 

 of Lebanon throve during early 

 Biblical times. This word is the 

 Hebrew for "holy" and the grove has 

 undoubtedly been preserved because 

 of its sacred character. The natives 

 to-day will tell you that the grove 

 is sacred because it "was planted by 

 Jesus Christ," — a belief which finds 

 the semblance of justification from a 

 poetical passage in the 104th Psalm 

 referring to "the Cedars of Lebanon 

 which the Lord has planted." 



As the traveler stands on the sum- 

 mit of Lebanon, nearly 10,000 feet 

 high, and looks down upon this 

 ancient grove, the remnant of a 

 mighty forest, and upon the still 

 more ancient glacial moraine upon 

 which it grew, and sees upon the 

 flank of Lebanon the ruins of ancient 

 temples and the vast expanse of the 

 Mediterranean beyond, and to the 

 east the distant ruins of Syrian 

 Baalbek, he may recall the force of 

 the words of Holy Writ, "all flesh is 

 grass and as the flower of the field 

 it perisheth." Over this expanse, 

 witnessed by these trees and their 

 immediate predecessors, have come 

 and gone all the great nations of 

 antiquity. Here are the relics of the 

 Assyrian, the Babylonian, the Egyp- 

 tian, the Phoenician, the Greek, the 

 Roman, the Moslem, but yesterday, 

 as it seems, the Crusader, and now 

 the warring Turk and Slav, And 

 each has done, and perhaps to-day is 

 doing, his part to destroy the moun- 

 tains' noble covering of forest and 

 to add to the desolation wrought by 

 his predecessor. Could the process 

 but be reversed, and the greed oi 

 man restrained and protection be 



