CEDRUS LIBANI 
Ufa"? 
2 I 
covered with snow, and himself in the act of plucking the cones. “ I did not content myself with taking 
the fruit, but I also cut down a young tree, of which there are several, in order to carry off some wood. It 
is a thing commonly said, and which has, as it were, passed into a proverb, that one cannot count the 
Cedars of Lebanon; that is to say, that when, after having counted them once, and found a certain number, 
and we wished to count them a second time, we shall not find the same number that we found the first 
time; and, in fact, I have experienced it myself: for, on once counting the most remarkable, I found them 
thirty-five the first time, and thirty-six the second. But I only attribute that difference to the haste with 
which I counted them, and perhaps, also, to their being somewhat mixed and confused among each other, 
which makes it very easy to mistake.” * 
In 1679 Gabriel Bremond published an account of his travels in these countries/ which is referred to 
by M. Loiseleur, but which we have been unable to meet with. Loiseleur’s reference to it does not relate 
to the number of the trees, but only to the general belief in their antiquity, viz., that they date back to 
Adam. In 1680 Von der Groben found only eighteen extremely old ones. He says of Lebanon: 
“ This is a lofty mountain decorated with various trees and fine gardens. Among the trees are the well- 
known and renowned Cedars often spoken of in history. Owing to its height this mountain is in many 
parts clothed with snow, both summer and winter. It has many fertile plains and valleys ; but in many 
parts, more especially where the Cedars stand, it is desert and unfruitful. To see the Cedars we ascended 
the mountain. Of the large extremely old Cedars there stand at the present only eighteen. They are 
green summer and winter, the same as the Fir trees. This tree never rots, and has a pleasant odour. The 
fruit is like a Fir cone, but larger and thicker.” i 
Within a few years after this, two or three of the trees seem to have fallen ; for La Roque, rather a 
celebrated traveller, who had visited Arabia, and Palestine, and Syria, and published accounts of his 
journeys, visited the Cedars in 1688, and found then only twenty large trees. “We rested for two hours, 
and dined in the midst of this little forest. It is composed of twenty Cedars of a prodigious size, and such 
as there is no comparison to make with the finest Planes, Sycamores, and other large trees which we have 
hitherto seen. Besides these principal Cedars, one sees a sufficient number of smaller ones, and others 
very small—the former placed indifferently among the first, and the others in the outskirts, separated, as it 
were, into little troops. ... The largest Cedar which we measured was, about the middle of its 
trunk, 6 feet 10 inches in girth [this should probably be 36 feet 10 inches—the figure 3 having evidently 
dropped out while the work was printing], and all the spread of its branches, sufficiently easy to measure, 
because they formed the perfect figure of a large circle, with a circumference of about 120 feet.”§ 
Still more of the trees seem to have fallen during the next ten years, reducing the number to sixteen. 
The account given by Maundrell in 1696 is as follows : “ Here are some of them very old, and of a pro¬ 
digious bulk; and others younger, of a smaller size. Of the former, I could reckon only about sixteen. 
The latter were very numerous.” II 
A French priest, Brother Felix Beaugrand, visited them (or appears to claim to have done so) at 
about the same time as Maundrell, but the number seen by him differs. He says, “ One sees seven or 
eight of them, which they believe to have existed from the beginning of the world. They are so large 
that four men could not embrace them.” IT The inference to be drawn is, that he had not been there 
himself, but wrote from hearsay. 
Mons. Paul Lucas, who passed from Tripoli to Sidon in 1714, says, “ The reader will expect without 
doubt that one sees many Cedars still; and I ought to tell him here that one sees very fine ones near 
Tripoli, but that none are to be found nowon the side of Sidon, where formerly there had been many.” ## 
* Voyage au Levant, par Corneille Le Brun, 1700, p. 306. 
t Gabriel Bremond, Viaggi fatti nel Egytto et cet., 1679, p. 296. 
% Der Herrn Otto Friedrich von der Groeben, Orientalische Reise Beschreibung. Neue Auflage. Danzig, 1779. 
§ La Roque, Voyage de Syrie et du Mont Liban, 1722, p. 83. 
|| Maundrell, Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem, 1696, p. 142. 
IT Relation Nouvelle et tres Fidele du Voyage de la Terre Sainte, par F. Felix Beaugrand. Paris, 1700, p. 6. 
** Voyage du Sieur Paul Lucas en Turquie, l’Asie, Sourie, Palestine, &c., 1720, p. 247. 
In 
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