The old world : Palestine, Syria, and Asia Minor : travel, incident, description and history . re us ! Two vast ridges ofLebanon, curving westward from the central spot wherewe stood like the horns of a bent bow or the wTings of atheatre, ran down toward the sea, breaking in their de-scent into a hundred minor hills, between which, unseen,unheard, and through as deep, and dark, and jagged achasm as ever yawned, the Kadisha, or sacred river ofLebanon, rushes down to the Mediterranean—the blueand boundless Mediterranean—which, far on the westernhorizon, meets and mingles with the sky. Our eyes,
The old world : Palestine, Syria, and Asia Minor : travel, incident, description and history . re us ! Two vast ridges ofLebanon, curving westward from the central spot wherewe stood like the horns of a bent bow or the wTings of atheatre, ran down toward the sea, breaking in their de-scent into a hundred minor hills, between which, unseen,unheard, and through as deep, and dark, and jagged achasm as ever yawned, the Kadisha, or sacred river ofLebanon, rushes down to the Mediterranean—the blueand boundless Mediterranean—which, far on the westernhorizon, meets and mingles with the sky. Our eyes, coming home again after roving over thenoble view, we had leisure to observe a small clump oftrees, not larger apparently than a clump in an Englishpark, at the very foot of the northern wing, or horn ofthis grand natural theatre: these were the far-famedcedars. We were an hour and twenty minutes reachingthem, the descent being very precipitous and we entered the grove, the air was quite perfumed withtheir odor, the smell of Lebanon, so celebrated by thepen of The Cedars of Lebanon. 395 The grove stands on a group of stony knolls, aboutthree quarters of a mile in circumference, and consists ofthree or four hundred trees partly the remains of a forestthat once perhaps filled the whole valley, and partly theyounger progeny of the venerable patriarchs amongstthem. The younger are very numerous, and would forma noble wood of themselves, were even the patriarchaldynasty quite extinct; one of them, by no means thelargest, measures nineteen feet and a quarter in circum-ference, and, in repeated instances, two, three and fourlarge trunks spring from a single root—but they have alla fresher appearance than the patriarchs and straighterstems—straight as young palm trees. They are not sovery young, either. Russegger thinks that most of thetrees in the grove may be a couple of centuries old, andseveral between the ages of four hundred and eight hun-dred y
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1860, bookpubli, booksubjectphysicians
