Arkansas true Democrat., 1858-02-02
The Cedars of Leabanon

correspondent of the Boston Traveller writ- ing from Beirut, Syria, under date of March 6.b 1857 says:
 Dlsmounting I surrendered my horse to tho guide, while l made my way as best conIJ down to the cedars, descent of more tbon 5000 feet. For long time no cedars appeared. and when at last they were seen in the distance and lar below me, cofess to feeling of disap- pohtment; Tor they appeared like sorry clump winch grew in my boyhood in my sainted fath- CTS COW pasture. At last we approached them: We entered among them; we walked under them: we looked up into them; and we sat down un- der ther amazing branches and midnight shade: and then, and not till then, 1 at least began to leel the awfulneSs and sanctitv of their presence: for my two Arabs cared not straw for them ana only wondered at the folly of such pains taking to see them. approached some of the most venerable forms; attempted to embrace them, when half dozen men could barely throw thelr united arms around them. 1 wished to address them, and thinking they understood Araolc, as well or better than American cried out: '' kamfhalack?'' How are you. old fel lows? What news from before the flood? But they deigned to make no reply onlv seeming to irown upon what they would have deemed ir- reverent and impertinent some thousands of years ago.
 The cedars stand upon three or four rocky hlllocks or knolls which join each other, and cover a space about forty rods in diameter form Ing thick forest without underbrush, fern, or ilowefs, and by the smoothness of the soil and the cOmpactness of the branches, making cool and agreeable promenade. The number of the trees has been variOusly estimated. on account of the different mode of reckoning the oldest trees all having several truks, which some tray. elIers have reckoned individually. while other, have taken the whole as one Burkhardt who IS regarded as good authority, says he counted eleven of the oldest and best looking: twentv- hve winch were very large; about fifty of mid ding size, and more than three hundred smaller and younger ones Rev. Mi Calhoun. principal of Abelh seminary, who has repeatedly visited the cedars and studied them reckons only seven or el9ht as among the prmeval forest. But even the decendantS of the second and third generation, or later. are generally of large di- mensions and wear vencrabv aspect As to slze, Maundrell, the celebrated traveller meas ured the trunk of one, whose girth he found to be twelve wards and six inches, or thirtv-six feet and half. Mir. Calhoun made one forty feet, 1 he branches shoot out above ten or twelve feet from the ground, and almost at right angles me lower ones bending so low that 1 easily broke of the cXtremitles. The height If the trunks cmnot exceed forty feet if even thirty while the spread of the braches is often thirty seven yards, or about one hundred and ten feet and so thlckly intertwined, and rising story above story, that the sun can hardly penetrate them.
 The youngest trees are some centuries old while the patriarch seven have usually bean re- garded as contemporary with Solomon and his temple. Rev. Mir. Calhoun, gentleman of science as well as an excellent missionary. cacu- lated from the diameter of one of the .rees and the dye,s of block which had been cut out of It, that according to the unerring chronology of Us growth, It must be fully three thousand years old, II not indeed older, as he was inclined to suspect. bo slow is the growth, that where, on certan tree, traveller, about two hundred wears ago, cut away place to inscribe his name the growth above the hewn spot is almost im- percephble, at any rate not greater than the thickness of the bark. Some of the trees are hollow high up the trunk, into one of which 1 succeeded m throwing d stone which may con- fOund the learned, though a part of the na- tural growth, or lead to some new geological theory ot the age of the world when the tree shall laIl and be cut up, some three thousand years hence Some are gnarled and twisted into strange shapes by the storms of twenty or thirty centuries while others have been shivered by the lightning. The hoary patriarch and father of all, above twelve feet in diameter StaLds nearly in the center of the little forest, on gentle emnence spre ading abroad his pom derouS and wide arms, each one d tree in itself above the heads of all generations which have grown up under them, as if in the instinct of love and protection of his children.