Note 1419 — FLOATING OF WOOD.

“My servants shall bring them down from Lebanon unto the sea: and I will convey them by sea in floats unto the place that thou shalt appoint me.”—1 Kings, chap. v. ver. 9. “And we will cut wood out of Lebanon, as much as thou shalt need: and we will bring it to thee in floats by sea to Joppa; and thou shalt carry it up to Jerusalem.”—2 Chronicles, chap. ii. v. 16. Pocock thinks that the wood was cut down near Tyre. The accounts given by travellers of Mount Lebanon, and the small remains of the ancient forests of cedar, have been collected by Busching in his Geography.

The following is the account given of these cedars by the abbé Binos, who visited them in the year 1778. “Here,” says he, “I first discovered the celebrated cedars, which grow in an oval plain, about an Italian mile in circumference. The largest stand at a considerable distance from each other, as if afraid that their branches might be entangled, or to afford room for their tender shoots to spring up, and to elevate themselves also in the course of time. These trees raise their proud summits to the height of sixty, eighty, and a hundred feet. Three or four, when young, grow up sometimes together, and form at length, by uniting their sap, a tree of a monstrous thickness. The trunk then assumes generally a square form. The thickest which I saw might be about thirty feet round; and this size was occasioned by several having been united when young. Six others, which were entirely insulated, and free from shoots, were much taller, and seemed to have been indebted for their height to the undivided effects of their sap.” These cedars, formerly so numerous, are now almost entirely destroyed. In the year 1575, Rauwolff found twenty-four that stood round about in a circle, and two others, the branches whereof are quite decayed with age; Bellon, in 1550, counted twenty-eight old trees; Fremenet, in 1630, counted twenty-two; La Roque, in 1688, twenty; Maundrell, in 1696, sixteen; Dr. Pococke, in 1738, fifteen; and Schulze, in 1755, counted twenty, besides some young ones; Burckhardt, in 1810, eleven or twelve; Dr. Richardson, in 1818, eight; Mr. Robinson, in 1830, seven; Lord Lindsay, in 1836, seven. Mr. Buckingham, in 1816, differs greatly from the other authorities, computing the whole number of trees at two hundred, of which he describes twenty as being very large.—Trans.