Note 165 — The Tenth Book.

A strange account of the Cedars of Lebanon is given by De la Roque. Voyage de Syrie & du Mont Liban. 1722.

“This little forest is composed of twenty Cedars of a prodigious size, so large indeed that the finest Planes, Sycamores, and other large trees which we had seen could not be compared with them. Besides these principal Cedars, there were a great number of lesser ones, and some very small, mingled with the large trees, or in little clumps near them. They differed not in their foliage, which resembles the Juniper, and is green throughout the year: but the great Cedars spread at their summit and form a perfect round, whereas the small ones rise in a pyramidal form like the Cypress. Both diffuse the same pleasant odour; the large ones only yield fruit, a large cone in shape almost like that of the Pine, but of a browner colour, and compacter shell. It gives a very pleasant odour, and contains a sort of thick and transparent balm, which oozes out thro’ small apertures, and falls drop by drop. This fruit which it is difficult to separate from the stalk, contains a nut like that of the Cypress; it grows at the end of the boughs, and turns its point upwards.

The nature of this tree is not to elevate its trunk, or the part between the root and the first branches; for the largest Cedars which we saw did not in the height of their trunks exceed six or seven feet. From this low but enormously thick body, prodigious branches rise, spreading as they rise, and forming by the disposition of their boughs and leaves which point upward, a sort of wheel which appears to be the work of art. The bark of the cedar, except at the trunk, is smooth and shining, of a brown colour. Its wood white and soft immediately under the bark, but hard and red within, and very bitter, which renders it incorruptible and almost immortal. A fragrant gum issues from the tree.

The largest Cedar which we measured was seven feet in circumference, wanting two inches, and the whole extent of its branches, which it was easy to measure from their perfect roundness, formed a circumference of about 120 feet.

The Patriarch of the Maronites, fully persuaded of the rarity of these Trees, and wishing by the preservation of those that remain to shew his respect for a forest so celebrated in Scripture has pronounced canonical pains, and even excommunication against any Christians who shall dare to cut them; scarcely will he permit a little to be sometimes taken for Crucifixes and little tabernacles in the chapels of our Missionaries.

The Maronites themselves have such a veneration for these Cedars, that on the day of Transfiguration they celebrate the festival under them with great solemnity, the Patriarch officiates and says Mass pontifically, and among other exercises of devotion they particularly honour the Virgin Mary there, and sing her praises, because she is compared to the Cedars of Lebanon, and Lebanon itself used as a metaphor for the mother of Christ.

The Maronites say that the snows have no sooner begun to fall than these Cedars, whose boughs in their infinite number are all so equal in height that they appear to have been shorn, and form, as we have said, a sort of wheel or parasol,—than these Cedars, I say, never fail at that time to change their figure. The branches which before spread themselves rise insensibly, gathering together it may be said, and turn their points upward towards Heaven, forming altogether a pyramid. It is Nature, they say, who inspires this movement, and makes them assume a new shape, without which these Trees never could sustain the immense weight of snow, remaining for so long a time.

I have procured more particular information of this fact, and it has been confirmed by the testimony of many persons, who have often witnessed it. This is what the Secretary of the Maronite Patriarch wrote to me in one of his letters, which I think it right to give in his own words. Cedri Libani quas plantavit Deus, ut Psalmist: loquitur, sitae sunt in planitie quâdam, aliquantulum infra altissimum Montis-Libani cacumen, ubi tempore hyemali maxima nivium quantitas descendit, tribusque & ultra, mensibus mordaciter dominatur. Cedri in altum ascendunt extensis tamen ramis in gyrum solo parallelis, confioientibus suo gyro fere umbellam solarem. Sed superveniente nive, quia coacervaretur in magnâ quantitate eos desuper, neque possent pati tantum pondus tanto tempore premens, sine certo fractionis discrimine, Natura, rerum omnium provida mater, ipsis concessit, ut adveniente hyeme & descendente nive, statim rami in altum assurgant, & secum invicem uniti constituant quasi conum, ut melius sese ab adveniente hoste tueantur. Naturá enim ipsâ verum est, virtutem quamlebet unitam simul reddi fortiorem.

The Cedars of Lebanon, which, as the Psalmist says, God himself planted, are situated in a little plain, somewhat below the loftiest summit of mount Lebanon, where in the winter a great quantity of snow falls, and continues for three months, or longer. The Cedars are high, but their boughs spread out parallel with the ground into a circle, forming almost a shield against the sun. But when the snow falls, which would be heaped upon them in so great a quantity, that they could not endure such a weight so long a time, without the certain danger of breaking, Nature, the provident mother of all, has endued them with power, that when the winter comes and the snow descends, their boughs immediately rise, and uniting together form a cone, that they may be the better defended from the coming Enemy. For in Nature itself it is true, that virtue as it is united, becomes stronger.