CEDAR OF LEBANON. 



527 



a few paces ;"" and this accounts for, or accords with, the 

 superstition mentioned by Thevenot, a French traveller, 

 who visited Lebanon in a. d. 1655, viz., that as often as the 

 Cedars of Lebanon are counted over they are found each 

 time to vary in number. According to this traveller, the 

 trees, at the time of his visit, amounted to twenty-three. 

 From Maundrell, who travelled in Syria in 1696, we have 

 a more particular description of these celebrated remains 

 of the ancient forest : — " These noble trees," he says, 

 " grow amongst the snow, near the highest part of Liba- 

 nus, and are remarkable as well for their own age and 

 largeness, as for the frequent allusions made to them in 

 the Word of God. There are some very old and of pro- 

 digious 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 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 gTeat tree." 



The next account is that of Dr. Pococke, who travelled 

 in Syria in a. d. 1744 and 1745, or about forty-eight years 

 after MaundrelFs visit. In the second volume of his " Des- 

 cription of the East," he thus details his interesting account 

 of Lebanon and the state of its ancient Cedars : " From 

 the Convent of St. Sergius, there is a gentle ascent for 

 about an hour, to a large plain between the highest parts of 

 Mount Lebanon. Towards the north-east corner of it are 

 the famous Cedars of Lebanon ; they form a grove about 



* This, it would appear, must have been the diameter, and not the circumfer- 

 ence of its spread, as Miller, in his " Diet. Art. Cedrus," states that a friend of his 

 who had visited Syria, confirms Maundrell's account, except that he found the 

 diameter of the spread of the head to be twenty-two yards, and not thirty-seven 

 yards in circumference, as had been supposed from MaundrelTs measurement. 



