The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1876-09-06
The Cedars Of Lebanon.

Prof. Fraas, an eminent German pro-
fessor, in a recent book Of travels IN
Syria and Palestine, gives this interest
ing account of the famous cedars OF
Lebanon The grove of cedars stands
on rocky spur, which has been de.
tached from the foot of peak named
Makmel, and has slipped downward into
valley. The subsol has nothing IN
common with the chalk strata presented
by the contiguous sections of the range,
but is rather q mass of pulverized dust
rubbed off the summit of the Makmel,
and accumulated at it's foot by glaciers
such deposit, in fact, as is frequently
met with in Upper Subia and Switzer-
land. The ground is broken into low,
irregular hillocks, divided by shallow
valleys, which form no water courses,
but hold the rain and snow water stag
nant till evaporation has depleted them.
The whole grove of cedars stands on
seven of these small undulations, only
nine trees being stationed, like outposts,
on the extreme edge of the valley. With
these exceptions not cedar far or near,
moreover in the immediate neighborhood
nor tree OF shrub of any kind, nothing
green or olive, in short, till far below in
the Bscharreh valley you come once
more on the cypress and the poplar.
Tie area occupied by the cedars may
cover 100000 square yards, and by
actual count the trees of this famous
forest number just 377, the numerous
double and treble trunks being reckoned
but once. The youngest of the existing
trees date back for many centuries, and
not few are primeval, or thousands of
years old. That under which the pro-
lessor pitched his tent was twenty. eight
feet in diameter at the height of the
breast. Some nine feet above the ground
the trunk split into four stems, which,
after springing vertically some twenty
feet further, then diverged and flung
out their huge arms at right angle.
The whole height of this colossal tree,
which, during a hundred generations,
has shaded the race of man, now scarcely
exceeds q hundred feet, all the tops of
its great boughs having been snapped
and rent away by the storms of centuries.
The largest ceder, which stands in the
yard of little Maronite church, has a
circumference of forty-fve feet, but
there are many whose girth ranges from
thirty-three to forty. Prof. Fraas care
fully measured and counted the annual
rings in cedar six feet thick, which had
been shivered by lightning during the
previous winter. Taking this as q basis,
he calculated that all the trees above
mentioned must be ut least 1000 years
old, while the patriarch of the forest
now overshadowiug the churchyard
should date back some twenty centuries
before Christ; in other words, have
Witnessed the dawning OF the Assyrian
empire, and may have shaded the focks
OF Abraham.
The professor states it as fact that
some OF the oldest trees which Solomon
and Cyrus and Alexander spared have
been scrawled over with the names of
wretched tourists, deep gashes, some
times foot in length, having been cut
with jackknives for the creditable pur-
pose. It is lact, too, that not few of
the finest cellars have been wantonly set
on IRE. Happily. the wood of Lebanon
is ;,garded by tho natives with super
stit.ous reverence anu there is a legend
that when Ibrahim Pasha determined,
forty years ago, to fell the grove for a
palace OF Cairo. and dispatched foreign
carpenter to the mountain, at the first
stroke of the sacrilegious Ak the work
mans hand withered at the root.