826 TAKING DOWN THE GAUNTLET. for several miles together, and, as the bishop of Chichester relates, obliged to lodge out in the cold: at such times he would make his servant ride about with his horses, whilst himself on foot used as much exercise as his age and the fatigues of the preceding day would permit. All this ho cheerfully underwent; esteoming such sufferings well compensated by the advantages which he hoped might accrue from them to his uninstructed fellow-creatures. "Our Saxon ancestors had a great aversion to the tedious forms of law. They chose rather to determine their disputes in a more concise manner, pleading generally with their swords. Let every dispute be decided by the sword,' was a Saxon law. A piece of ground was described, and covered with mats: here the plaintiff and defendant tried their cause. If either of them was driven from this boundary, he was obliged to redeem his life by three marks. He whose blood first stained the ground, lost his suit. "This custom still prevailed on the borders, where Saxon barbarism held its latest possession. These wild Northumbrians indeed went beyond the ferocity of their ancestors. They were not content with a duel: each contending party used to muster what adherents ho could, and commence a kind of petty war. So that a private grudge would often occasion much bloodshed. "It happened that a quarrel of this kind was on foot, when Mr. Gilpin was at Rothbury in those parts. During the two or three first days of his preaching, the contending parties observed some decorum, and never appeared at church together. At length, however; they met. One party had been carly at church, and just as Mr. Gilpin began his sermon, the other entered. They stood not long silent. Inflamed at the sight of each other, they begin to clash their weapons, for they were all armed with javelins and swords, and mutually approach. Awed, however, by the sacredness of the place, the tumult in some degree ceased. Mr. Gilpin proceeded: when again the combatants begin to brandish their weapons, and draw towards cach other. As a fray seemed near, Mr. Gilpin stepped from the pulpit, went between them, and addressing the leaders, put an end to the quarrel for the present, but could not effect an entire reconciliation. They promised him, however, that till the sermon was over, they would make no more disturbance. He then went again into the pulpit, and spent the rest of the time in endeavouring to make them ashamed of what they had done. His behaviour and discourse affected them so much, that at his farther entreaty, they promised to forbear all acts of hostility while he continued in the country. And so much respected was he among them, that whoever was in fear of his enemy, used to resort where Mr. Gilpin was, esteeming his presence the best protection. "One Sunday morning, coming to a church in those parts before the people were assembled, he observed a glove hanging up, and was informed by the sexton, "The people of this country have had one very barbarous custom among them. If any two be displeased, they expect no law, but bang it out bravely, one and his kindred against the other and his. They will subject themselves to no justice, but in an inhuman and barbarous manner fight and kill one another. They run together in clans, as they term it, or names. This fighting they call their deadly feides. Of late, since the union of both kingdoms, this heathenish custom is repressed, and good laws made against such barbarous and unChristian misdemea nours.'-Survey of Newcastle, "Harleian Miscellany," vol. iii. that it was meant as a challenge to any one that should take it down. Mr. Gilpin ordered the sexton to reach it him; but upon his utterly refusing to touch it. he took it down himself, and put it in his breast. When the people were assembled, he went into the pulpit; and before he concluded his sermon, took occasion to rebuke them severely for these inhuman challenges. I hear,' saith he, that one among you hath hanged up a glove even in this sacred place, threatening to fight any one who taketh it down: see, I have taken it down;' and pulling out the glove, he held it up to the congregation; and then showed them how unsuitable such savage practices were to the profession of Christianity; using such persuasives to mutual love as he thought would most affect them. "The disinterested pains he thus took among these barbarous people, and the good offices he was always ready to do them, drew from them the sincerest expressions of gratitude. Indeed he was little less than adored, and might have brought the whole country almost to what he pleased." DISCOVERY OF CEDAR FORESTS IN LEBANON. BY THE REV. H. B. TRISTRAM. Ir is not in granito peaks nor in glittering glaciers that the glory of Lebanon consists. Far away, as we turn our faces northwards from Galilee, a long, irregular line of snow-capped hills seems to meet the clouds; vast, but not imposing; lofty, but not magnificent. There is neither the rich colouring of our Scottish highlands, nor the solitary majesty of Alpine crests. The glory of Lebanon is hidden in its deep glens and recesses, in its furrowed cliffs and gushing cascades. The struggle between savage rocks and a balmy climate has been wide-spread and indecisive, and neither desolation nor luxuriance can anywhere assert a complete victory. Though bold and wooded on its western and seaward face, the general character of the Lebanon, like that of most other limestone ranges, is featureless and monotonous. A wide platform, clad with olive trees, supports its base, and the mountains rise, by a succession of irregular terraces, to a height of about ten thousand feet, running from Phoenicia for many miles in a north-easterly direction. No tremendous convulsions or overflowing volcanoes have agitated that massive ridge, as step by step some slowly-receding ocean left its sides exposed. We visited the Lebanon for the second time from the south-east, following the opening of Cole-Syria (the Roman tetrarchy of Abilene), which forms a cleft between the ranges of Antelebanon, terminating in Hermon, and of the Lebanon; and which is now known by the expressive name of El Bukaa, "the wedgo.” It always was the garden of Syria, and reaches to "the entering in of Hamath." As we rode up the course of one of the feeders of the Orontes, the change of vegetation registered our increasing elevation. We had long lost the olive, the characteristic tree of Palestine; now the apricot (which I take to be the apple" of Scripture) became scarce, and the common apple, which we had never found in the Holy Land, took its place. The ripe corn and bare stubbles (for it was the 14th June) were exchanged for green wheat, and the mulberry became stunted in its growth. plain of Cole-Syria is as fertile and uninteresting as such tracts usually are, but as soon as we had begun to mount the castern slope of Jebel Sunnin, the highest t The DISCOVERY OF CEDAR FORESTS IN LEBANON. part of Lebanon, all was changed-the roads and the crops for the worse, everything else for the better. This east side of Lebanon is somewhat bare, the lower parts scantily clothed with stunted oaks, junipers, and berberry bushes, since here the cold forbids the southern flora and fragrant shrubs of Carmel and Tabor. After surmounting the lower platform, we came upon a wide, flat terrace, with fine turf here and there, and many plants, chiefly of a northern character, though of species distinct from our own. At the further extremity of this plain stands the bleak village of Ainat, with its low stone-built, flat-roofed houses. From this place we descended at once into a charming little glen, carefully cultivated, and with noble clumps of great walnut trees, but with no trace of the ancient cedars. Here we camped for the night under some trees. A little stream ran at our feet fed by rills which leaped in tiny cascades from rock to rock down the mountain side. The snow had been so far cleared by the summer's sun, that next morning we were able to cross by the highest pass, so as to descend close upon the famous cedar grove. For nearly two hours we zigzagged up the steep mountain side, looking down so perpendicularly upon our camping ground of the past night, that it seemed as though a sudden bound might have sent our horses upon the tops of the walnut trees. The eye stretched across the plain of the Bukaa till it rested on the distant range of Antelebanon, at the foot of which a green and brown spot marked the site of ancient Baalbec. The snow which we had to cross at the top was hard and compact, crisp under the horses' feet, and many Alpine birds charmed us by their song. The beautiful horned lark of Persia (Otocoris penicillata, Gould) met here with the wheatcar of our own downs, with the familiar brown linnet of our shrubberics, and with the lonely snowfinch of the Alps; and all vied in giving us a musical welcome to their bare and wintry home. Many a rare perfumed flower shed its sweetness round the edge of the snow, and almost under its mantle; especially a specics of dwarf jasmine, just then one mass of blossom. We had crossed the first snow-ridge, when a joyous view burst suddenly upon us, and the whole sea coast, from Beyrout almost to Ruad, the ancient Arvad, lay spread ten thousand feet beneath us. In the nearer foreground below, was a sort of hollow or basin, the upper drainage of the great valley of the Kadisha, a rough, rocky plain, heaped with mounds, which are doubtless the "moraines," or deposits of ancient ice; and its enclosing sides scarped by the traces of the primeval glaciers which formed these moraines. In the midst of this area, closed in by snow-streaked mountains on, east, north, and south, but open towards the west, and looking on the broad expanse of sea more than six thousand feet bencath, on a group of mounds, at the very "edge" of the height of Lebanon, stood a dark green clump of treesthe famous cedar grove. Dean Stanley, and most other visitors, remark that the first view of the grove is a disappointment. We certainly did not feel it so, perhaps because our view was from above instead of, as in their case, from below; perhaps because so many have remarked upon the insignificance of the group, that we expected nothing. On the contrary, we were struck by the very marked feature which the grove, inconsiderable indeed in itself, formed in the vast and bare landscape. Where there are few features, these, even 827 if small, must, when in strong contrast with all around, arrest attention. There are several noticeable features which struck us at once. First, the position of the cedars at the "edge of Lebanon" (Isa. xxxvii. 24), the only vegetation visible as we looked down into the wide amphitheatre, but yet themselves linked with man and with civilization by a narrow strip of cultivated valley, which commences at the extremity of the grove, and gradually widens and expands, till, in the course of a few miles, it becomes the fruitful vale of the Kadisha. Then we had heard so much of there being only ten or twelve old trees and a few young ones around, that we were not prepared for a group of more than three hundred and fifty trees, all fine timber, while from the spot where we stood old and young were quite undistinguishable. The distance looked short from the top of he pass, but we wound for a long two hours down the steep rocky declivity before we reached the group, lying a little to the right of the road. The great charm of solitude is no longer here, for a little square chapel and several rude huts have been erected under the central clump, and the inhabitants find touting and pestering visitors a profitable variety in their ordinary occupation of goat-herding. But before we came upon these, more agreeable denizens arrested our attention. The grove was vocal with life. Innumerable cicada hissed and grilled around, and many a familiar, and some strange notes of birds welcomed us from the branches. The common chaffinch, which we had never found in Palestine since the winter, gave forth his blithe chirrup from every tree; numbers of the English coletit were almost out of sight aloft among the boughs, being an addition to the birds of Syria hitherto unnoticed; a beautiful little species of finch, akin to the canary, and which has not yet been described, was in little bands everywhere, and a redstart, never before brought to England (Ruticilla semirufa, H. and E.), sent forth a nuthatch-like note as he stealthily glided from trunk to trunk. Many hooded crows, ravens, kestrels, hobby-hawks, and wood owls, were secreted in the topmost boughs, almost out of shot. The trees are not too crowded, and many of the younger ones have a circumference of eighteen feet; nor are they entirely confined to the grove, as there are several stragglers of considerable size to the north and west. In such a spot we could well comprehend the feeling of superstition which seduced the chosen people to erect altars and high places "on every high hill, and under every green tree." The breeze, as it soughed through the dark boughs, seemed to breathe sounds of solemnity and awe, and to proclaim "the trees of the Lord" "the cedars of Lebanon which he hath planted." These havo been too often described for me to repeat here the story of their size and shape. The "cedar in Lebanon with fair branches, and with a shadowy shroud, and of a high stature, the fir trees were not like his boughs, and the chestnut trees were not like his branches, nor any tree in the garden of the Lord was like unto him in his beauty." (Ezek. xxxi.) What description can be more sublime, what more exact? Gladly would we have spent another day on the spot, but our baggage was four hours in advance, and we must proceed. We followed down the little strip of cultivation by the rivulet, which gradually swells into the Kadisha. After a rugged and difficult descent of an hour or two, the wondrous cultivation of the valley burst upon us, almost abruptly, near the villago 818 DISCOVERY OF CEDAR FORESTS IN LEBANON. of Bsherreh. The bare amphitheatre of the upper basin now became contracted into a deep gorge, which was hollowed and rent at its bottom into a chasm of a thousand feet, where dashed the darkly-buried stream. Above this rocky cleft, whose perpendicular sides stood parallel their whole height, the valley sloped outwards, north and south, to the height of above two thousand feet more; and far as the eye could trace the towering slopes above us, it was terraced with the most indefatigable industry. No room here for even one straggling cedar of the ancient forest. Yet not far beyond, just a little to the north-west, between the villages of Bsherreh and Elfden, guarding a small fountain which belongs to Ehden, another group of cedars lingers beyond the line of cultivation, not certainly of royal size, yet still ancient timber trees, which appear to have escaped the notice of all preceding writers. Their position would indicate that the primeval forest had, at that elevation, once extended the whole way westward from the well-known grove. When we turned down to Bsherreh, on all sides amidst the terraces, tiny streamlets bounded and leaped down the rocks, forming long chains of cascades as they rushed to swell the river below. Many of these were of great height, and some of considerable volume. As we stood above the village, we could count no less than seven of these long chains, now dashing in foam, down a cliff, then lost for a few yards under the mulberry trees of a terrace, soon to re-appear bounding over the next shelving rock. The mulberry was the principal cultivation, but the walnut also was planted wherever the soil was sufficiently deep, and grows to a great size; while throughout, whatever the tree, mulberry, apricot, or apple, every nook and corner under their shade or out of it, bore its bunch of corn, its stem of maize, or its straggling cucumber or melon plant. The villages, in long line, fringed both sides of the deep chasm, at the lower margin of the ledge, looking down into the dark glen beneath; not compact villages like those of the plains, but isolated, flat-topped houses, peering like brown clods amidst the dark foliage in which they were buried, and principally clustering round each village church. The Lebanon village church, and there are churches everywhere (for here, and here alone, in Syria, the whole population are Maronite Christians, and probably of the old Syrian race), has no pretensions to architectural style. It is a large oblong building, of considerable height, with a flat earth-covered roof, and a small open bell turret, either in the centre of the south wall, or at one end. There is a priest's door at the north-east corner, and on the south side separate doors for the men and the women, each with a small Greek cross carved over the doorway, and a human skull, the relic of some local saint or martyr, in a frame with an iron grating projecting from the wall. There are one or two churches in each village, and lower down, in the deepest shades of the gorge, where it seemed as though the foot of goat could hardly climb, was many a little hermit chapel and cell, while not a scrap of the surface where root could hold or cling was left without its plant. How the cultivators ever got up or down to many of these nooks it would puzzle any but an experienced birdsnester to discover. On the northern edge of the gorge clung the long village of Bsherreh, through which, by a bridle path rugged even for Syria, we led our stumbling horses, greeted as we passed by many of the prettiest and most graceful damsels I ever saw Hazrum was pointed out to us, almost within hail, only a mile further on, but on the other side of the glen, and long and circuitous was the descent, and again the scramble up for two weary hours, before we reached our destination. We crept along a niche up the gorge, beneath the path we had followed to the village, until we came upon two trees thrown across the chasm, barely covered with a scanty supply of earth, to enable a horse to tread, while the angry torrent roared among the rocks many yards below. Here the peculiar type of Lebanon scenery might be enjoyed in all its loveliness. As we rode along, the opposite bank was marked by many a silver thread of streamlet and cascade. One waterfall in particular arrested our attention as it dashed down the steep, and was lost to sight behind a wall of rock a thousand feet high, at the bottom of which was a natural archway, through which the torrent, having worked a hidden channel for itself behind the frontage of cliff, joined the main stream of the Kadisha. Soon after sunset we reached our tents pitched in a garden under some magnificent walnut trees. Immediately in front of us stood a rustic booth, filled with several stages, on which the silkworms of our landlord were tended by his wife and children. Elderly hens, onions, and apples, supplied our supper, and soundly we slept after fourteen hours of exciting travel. The next morning (June 17), after having studied Van de Velde's map, and having observed a district marked as not yet explored, we determined to make a detour thither, leaving the main ridge of Lebanon to the east, and crossing several shoulders or spurs which ran down to the sea. More than once during the day we had to traverse snow ridges on these shoulders, and the scenery was bleak and bare. While riding up the steep ascent from Hazrun to El Hadith, we met two peasants laden with faggots of firewood, and Mr. Lowne, our botanist, at once detected among them boughs of true cedar. We eagerly enquired where they had found "el ar'z" (the cedar), and they pointed us to a lofty bare hill-side, not far off on our right, studded with scattered trees, which they told us were all "ar'z." On examination, we found their report correct. While the nearer slopes were dotted very sparsely with old riven trunks of half-decayed junipers and a few aged pines, the cedars were collected on this hill between El Hadith and Niha; very possibly a portion of the country traversed by the German naturalists Hemprich and Ehrenberg in 1823, who reported cedars as existing near the road between Tripoli and Beyrout. An hour afterwards, as we crossed the next ridge, and approached one of the feeders of the Wady Duweir, we noticed that the wild gorge to our right was clad from top to bottom with a scattered forest of trees, which, when examined through our glasses, appeared too spreading and flat-topped to pass for pines. This ravine was too elevated as well as too rugged to encourage any attempt at cultivation even by the industrious mountaineers, and has remained untouched by man, one of the last strongholds of the almost extinct Syrian bear. In spite of our muleteer's angry remonstrances that there was neither time nor track to reach it, we determined to turn aside and examine the valley, and soon, to our delight, ascertained, as we had expected, that all the trees were true cedar, many of them of fair size, though none of them approaching the colossal grandeur or antiquity of the patriarchs of the grove. The trees were for the most part grouped in scattered DISCOVERY OF CEDAR FORESTS IN LEBANON. 829 clusters; but they were scattered also in every variety | point to the true cedar peculiarly and exclusively. of situation, some clinging to the steep slopes, or gnarled and twisted on the bare and exposed hill-top, others sheltered in the recesses of the dell. Mr. Lowne eagerly climbed one of the larger trees, and brought down some cones in triumph. The largest trees might measure some fifteen or eighteen feet in circumference. Time failed us to descend very far down the glen, which of course we could only accomplish on foot; but we saw enough to satisfy us that there were still here cedars sufficient to have rebuilt the temple of Solomon. Great was our delight at our discovery, or rather re-discovery; for I have since learnt from my friend Mr. Jessop, the American missionary at Beyrout, that we cannot fairly claim the honour, since a missionary several years since published an account of this very forest in some American religious periodical, where it has since lain buried. Nor are these the only spots where the cedar of Lebanon still lingers. Five hours, to the south-west of Hadith, near a place called Dûma, there are many scattered cedars. Still more interesting are the traces of the primeval forest growth, which we subsequently ascertained to exist in a far distant part of Lebanon to the south. Few travellers who are really interested in the Lebanon and its inhabitants remain long at Beyrout without making an excursion to Deir el Kamar, the ancient stronghold and head-quarters of the Druses; but scarcely any one has explored the fastnesses of the barren heights and glens beyond it. But if, leaving the valley of the Nahr ed Damur, they will undertake on foot an expedition across the hills to the east of this, and follow up the next valley the course of the Nahr el Baruk, they will find above the village of Ain Zahalteh, many thin clumps and scattered trees of the cedar of Lebanon." I have thus pointed out six spots where this sacred tree still exists, and I have little doubt but that a careful search among the western roots of the Lebanon, which has never yet been thoroughly accomplished, would result in the discovery of many more relics of the primæval forest. The subject is not without considerable interest in its bearings on the illustration of scriptural language and imagery. It is quite possible that the Hebrew word "erez," translated "cedar" in our version, and which is identical with the modern Arabic "ar'z" (or with the article "el ar'z ") may be sometimes used without the additional "of Lebanon "-to express generally the tribe of fir or cone-bearing trees (of which the cedar of Lebanon is one); and in one passage (Lev. xiv. 6) it must be so interpreted, for the cedar of Lebanon never could have grown in the wilderness of Sinai; still the constant allusions to the cedars of Lebanon in the Psalms and the prophets seem to * Dr. Thomson, in his delightful work, "The Land and the Book," asserts, without further explanation, that those travellers who state they have seen the cedar on other parts of Lebanon "are simply mistaken," and that their cedar is another species. It is only possible to meet so sweeping an assertion by as unqualified a contradiction. I have great regard for my excellent friend Dr. Thomson as a missionary, a traveller, and a writer, but he will forgive me for excepting his botanical judgment; and I can only say that in this, as in some other questions of natural history, my friend is "simply mistaken." There is no other species of cedar in Syria than that of Lebanon; and the Deodara, its only congener, is not found within many hundred miles. Spealready been deposited, under the care of Dr. Hooker, in the cimens of the cedar and its cones from our new localities have Museum of the Royal Gardens at Kew. The cedars of Lebanon which he hath planted ""The trees of the Lord "-" The cedars of Lebanon that are high and lifted up "--" The voice of the Lord. breaketh the cedars, yea the Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon "-"The Amorite, whose height was like the height of the cedars "-" The Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon with fair branches -"Open thy doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour thy cedars: howl, fir tree, for the cedar is fallen," where the lesser fir tree is especially contrasted with the great cedar, as the humble follower bewailing the fall of its mighty chief. And it was the cutting down of these cedars which Sennacherib is represented as making the special topic of his haughty boast. And though Linnæus had not yet arranged his system of nature, we may be very certain that the wise man, whose botanical knowledgo extended downwards from the cedar that was in Lebanon, had clearly noted the difference between the proud cedar, with which the thistle had the monstrous presumption to propose to ally itself (2 Kings xiv. 9), and the ordinary fir tree, which then existed throughout the whole of Palestine. The name has been handed down on the spot intact throughout all the changes of language, and the name "ar'z" is never applied by the natives to any tree but the true cedar; while by an interesting philological journey, we have derived from the Spaniards, and they from the Moors of North Africa, who in their turn drew the appellation from their brethren in Syria, the name "larch," a contraction of "el ar'z," which we have almost unconsciously applied to the larch, the tree most unlike in appearance, but most closely allied in reality, of all our familiar firs to the true cedar of Lebanon. We cannot, then, study all the passages in the Old Testament which so refer to the cedar, without feeling certain that in ancient times it was a far more conspiIt was cuous feature in the landscape than it is now. not merely a few groups, and scattered trees hidden in the most inaccessible recesses, which could have so frequently suggested that glorious and majestic imagery of the prophets. They spoke to men to whom the splendour of those monarchs of the forest was familiar. In the cedars of the famous grove we have living evidence handed down to us that that imagery was no exaggeration. In the scattered relics, whose position we have traced on other parts of the mountain, we have a living evidence that the range of the cedar was wide spread, and therefore that illustrations drawn from it were familiar and forcible. Its gradual destruction has been the necessary consequence of the dense population of the Lebanon, the only portion of the vast country of Syria whose population has multiplied, because the only Christian portion. The population has increased most where the soil is poorest, because there least exposed to invaders and plunderers, and every scrap of ground that could be rendered available for the growth of the mulberry tree has been so appropriated; the wealth of these mountaineers depending on the silkworms which they rear, and feed on their mulberry leaves, for the Damascus market. Again, fuel here is most precious and scarce. Thus every possible cause has operated for the extirpation of the primitive forest, and it is only when above the line of elevation up to which the soil can be profitably cultivated, or when in ravines too steep and poor to tempt agriculture, that the cedar has been able to hand down the living proof's of its ancient empire. |