Away to the north, over a rough and difficult road, are the famous Cedars of Lebanon.
They are in a valley which is dominated by the high peaks of the range, and stand on a little hill or knoll, so that they are visible from a considerable distance.
The grove is not large—one can walk quite around it in half an hour—and contains not far from four hundred trees of all sizes. The old and gnarled trees are in the centre, while the younger ones form the outside of the grove. Not more than a dozen can claim any great antiquity, but there are thirty or forty others that vary from three to five feet in diameter—the largest of the trees, and supposed to be one of the oldest, is more than forty feet in circumference.
The trees have been much defaced and broken by visitors, some of whom would no doubt carry away the whole of Mount Lebanon if it could be packed in a travelling trunk.
Though there are other cedar groves in Syria, the one here mentioned is the most important, for the reason that it is supposed to have furnished the timber for Solomon’s Temple, as recorded in the Old Testament. Cedar trees were doubtless very abundant in the palmy days of Jerusalem; at present they are very scarce, and if the natives and other barbarians continue to destroy their limbs and build fires in the grove, as they do in these days, these famous trees will soon live only in history.
Up, up we went along the sides of Mount Lebanon, the air growing cooler as we rose, and a violent hail-storm dropping upon us. It was warm when we left Beyrout, and I mounted my box without an overcoat. Soon it grew cool, and I donned a light one; an hour later, I abandoned the light for a heavy one; next I spread my shawl in front of me, and next I wrapped a silk kerchief around my neck.
We made our second change of horses after passing the summit, and then began the descent. Now we had speed; we wound down and down, as we had wound up and up, but we went three or four times as fast. Far away at our feet lay a plain—the plains of Buka. Two hours from the summit, we were at Stora, a wayside station, where we passed the night, and were most kindly treated by the keepers—a Greek man married to an Italian woman, once a danseuse at La Scala, Milan.