Nature and Art, February 1, 1867. 
A BUNCH OP FIB CONES. 
41 
form for transport ; whilst a third party, with the 
assistance of the teams, draw them to the nearest 
river or stream, where they remain until the break- 
up of the ice in the spring. This usually takes 
place about the month of April. The huge logs 
are now thrust forth into the current, and kept 
moving onward by re-launching them when 
stranded. Each tributary rivulet serves to con- 
tribute its quota of floating tree-trunks to the 
mighty rivers flowing onwards to the sea. Down 
these, vast rafts are conducted by the hardy crews 
who know full well how to manage them ; men 
whose home is in the wild pine woods, and to whom 
the rushing rapid, the giddy whirlpool, and the 
drift-laden flood are as high roads and turnpikes. 
The port of shipment being reached, the labours of 
the lumber-man are ended, and his hard-earned 
wages due. These, like a sailor’s prize-money, are 
too often scattered heedlessly, when an empty 
pocket and the opening lumber season send him 
back to the wilderness again. There are numbers 
of the cone-bearing family which, although beautiful 
and most interesting, can by us, during this ramble 
at least, be but the subjects of a passing glance. 
Pineasters, Spruces, White and Black Hemlocks, 
and Balsam Pines, from which the far-famed 
Canada balsam is procured, — all these shall we 
pass on our journey. We cannot stay to taste the 
spruce beer, see the young twigs boiled and fer- 
mented with maple sugar, watch the Indians stitch 
their bark canoes with the tough roots, linger over 
turpentine, or prepare pitch ; we are only wayfarers 
among the trees, so must travel onwards, and see 
what is noteworthy about Cedars. Those of 
Lebanon have frequent notice in the Bible, and 
high value appears to have been set on them by the 
ancients. Both Pliny and Vitruvius speak of the 
use of cedar resin in the treatment of papyrus and 
the embalming of Egyptian mummies. Diodorus 
Siculus informs us that Sesostris the Great, king 
of Egypt, built a vessel of cedar, 280 cubits long, 
which was covered with gold both within and with- 
out. The largest cedar mentioned in ancient 
history is that which was used to make a galley 
from for King Demetrius, which was propelled by 
eleven ranks of oars. Its length was 130 feet, and 
its thickness 1 8 feet. The question has been raised 
as to whether it might not have been an evergreen 
cypress, but the Cedar appears to have been too 
well known to admit of the error. Amongst other 
freaks of a luxurious fancy, we find that the Emperor 
Caligula had constructed from cedar-wood certain 
magnificent vessels, which he called Liburnian ships. 
The poops of these were decorated and enriched 
with gems and precious stones, the sails were of 
different colours, and the interiors were most 
sumptuously fitted up with baths and banquet- 
rooms, in which were splendid paintings and carved 
work. One of the first writers of travels who gives 
any description of Mount Lebanon and its cedars 
is Belon, who visited Syria about the year 1550. 
Thus he writes “ About sixteen miles from 
Tripoli, a city in Syria, at a considerable height up 
the mountain, the traveller arrives at the monastery 
of the Virgin Mary, which is situated in a valley. 
Thence, proceeding four miles further up the moun- 
tain, he will arrive at the Cedars ; the Maronites, 
or the monks, acting as guides. The Cedars stand 
in a valley and not at the top of the mountain, 
and they are supposed to be twenty-eight in number, 
though it is difficult to count them, they being 
distant from each other a few paces. These the 
Archbishop of Damascus has endeavoured to prove 
to be the same that Solomon planted with his own 
hands in the quincunx manner as they now stand. 
No other tree grows in the valley in which they are 
situated, and it is generally so covered with snow 
as to be only accessible in the summer.” 
In Solomon’s day Mount Lebanon must have 
possessed immense forests of cedar, for when he 
rebuilt the temple of Jerusalem, we find that he 
obtained permission from Hiram, king of Tyre, to 
cut down the Cedar and Fir necessary from Mount 
Lebanon, and that for this purpose he sent four 
score thousand hewers to cut down the trees. W e 
also read that there was a palace built by Solomon, 
which was called the House of the Forest of 
Lebanon, from the great quantity of cedar used in 
its construction. He is said to have paid to Hiram 
twenty thousand measures of wheat and twenty 
measures of pure oil annually while the work was 
in progress, and when it was completed he ceded 
to him twenty villages in Galilee. Churchill thus 
writes of the Pride of Lebanon : — 
“ Tlie cedar, whose top motes the highest cloud, 
Whilst his old father Lebanon grows proud 
Of such a child, and his vast body laid 
Out many a mile, enjoys the filial shade.” 
There appears some doubt as to the exact period 
at which the Cedar was first introduced into this coun- 
try, and also to whom the honour of first producing 
the plant from seed is due. Lord Holland writes 
his opinion that it was first introduced by his 
ancestor, Sir Stephen Fox; but the weight of evi- 
dence collected from old records and MSS. is 
decidedly in favour of Evelyn being the first Avho 
raised young cedar plants from cone-seed in Eng- 
land. He says, in his curious work on trees, that 
“ the Cedar is a beautiful and stately tree, clad in 
perpetual verdure ; that it grows, even where the 
snow lies, as I am told, almost half the year ; for so 
it does on the mountains of Libanus, from whence 
I have received cones and seed of those few remain- 
ing trees. Why then should it not thrive in old 
England 1 I know not, save for want of industry 
and trial.” That he succeeded in raising his young 
plants, the following extract from a letter written 
by him to the Boyal Society, dated Sayes Court, 
Deptford, April 16, 1 684, will go far to prove. 
“ As to exotics,” writes he (referring to the severe 
winter which had just passed), “ my cedars 1 think 
are dead." It is highly probable that they did not 
die, and that the celebrated Enfield cedar came 
from him about that time as a seedling. The Cedar 
was not introduced in France until the year 1734, 
when Bernard de Jussieu, who had been visiting 
friends in England, took two young plants home 
with him safely curled up in his hat. One of these 
