CEDRUS LIBANI 
25 
inches in circumference. All the trees are much furrowed by lightning, which seems to strike them more 
or less every year. In the midst of these old trees, are about forty other Cedars, comparatively young, 
though the trunk of the smallest of them is from 10 to 12 feet in circumference. ... It is not alone at 
Lebanon that Cedars are found. Above the village of Ehden one sees large trees, which the distance does 
not permit one to recognise, but which the natives affirm to be Cedars. There is not one young Cedar 
in all the wood of El Herze.” # 
Lord Lindsay, in the same year (1836), passed through the Grove on his way back from Baalbec and 
Anti-Libanus. He says : “ Several generations of Cedars, all growing promiscuously together, compose this 
beautiful Grove. The younger are very numerous ; the second-rate would form a noble wood of themselves, 
were even the patriarchal dynasty quite extinct: one of them, by no means the largest, measures 195 feet in 
circumference, and, in repeated instances, two, three and four large trunks spring from a single root; but 
they have all a fresher appearance than the patriarchs, and straighter stems, straight as young Palm trees. 
Of the giants there are seven standing very near each other, all on the same hill—three more a little farther 
on, nearly in a line with them. And in a second walk of discovery after my companions had lain down 
to rest, I had the pleasure of detecting two others, low down on the northern edge of the Grove—twelve, 
therefore, in all, of which the ninth from the south is the smallest; but even that bears tokens of antiquity 
coeval with its brethren. The stately bearing and graceful repose of the young Cedars contrasts singularly 
with the wild aspect and frantic attitude of the old ones, flinging abroad their knotted and muscular 
limbs like so many Laocoons, while others, broken off, lie rotting at their feet; but life is strong in 
them all.” t 
» 
Monsieur Eusebe de Salle, who describes himself as the First Interpreter of the African Army, visited 
the Cedars about 1838. He describes them as “scattered over three or four hillocks, which may be a 
quarter of a league square in extent. In arriving from the west, one meets at first, or, rather, one leaves 
to the left, four or five old gnarled trees, which seem to act as sentinels before the principal group. The 
guides make you arrive under the shade of the five or six most antient Cedars. ... To explain the 
diversity in the numbers of trees reckoned by travellers at different times, at periods many of them very 
near each other, during which a knotty, muscular and contorted tree could certainly not have had time 
to grow, let us say that the trunks of most of the old trees are not perfectly well defined. There is one that 
may be counted either for one, or two, or three trees soldered together by long vicinity. . . . But I ought 
to add that the principal group of these Nestors is not the only group. To the west and north of the 
cluster we find several which have already the appearance of age, and on the bark of which the names 
of travellers form long dynasties.”! 
The Rev. Dr. Fisk, Prebendary of Lichfield, visited “the Grove” in 1841, and thus describes them: 
“ On nearing the Cedars the clump assumes the stateliness of a forest. The young trees which skirt the 
plantation are noble specimens, and justly claim our admiration. We wound our way through the midst of 
them with the ‘ smell of Lebanon ’ about us, and soon reached those venerable trees which have received 
the reverence of ages. The antient ones are twelve in number, seven of them clustered together, and the 
other five at various parts of the Grove. I did not measure the girth of any, but I felt their gigantic 
proportions while reclining beneath their shade. And are these the trees—the very trees of which Solomon 
spake; and which have supplied the inspired penmen with imagery to symbolise spiritual dignity and the 
glory which is of righteousness—why should they not be ? I know not. Certainly they bear traces of the 
lapse of ages upon ages. They appear as old as Lebanon itself—as if they had never been seedlings. If 
they are not the very trees, surely they have sprung from the seeds of the most antient ones. The seven 
which are clustered together go up like gigantic pillars, and their interlaced arms above—each in itself a 
* Laure in Cultivateur Provencal. Vol. i. p. 317. 
t Letters from Egypt, Edom, and the Holy Land, by Lord Lindsay. London. 
X Peregrinations en Orient par Eusebe de Salle. Paris, 1840. P. 127. 
4th ed. (1847), p. 349. 
G 
vast 
