The group of cedars remaining on this part of the Lebanon is held
sacred by the Greek Church on account of a prevailing notion that
the trees were standing at a time when the temple of Jerusalem was
built.
They occupy three or four acres on the mountain's side, and
many of them are gnarled in a way that implies great age, but
except these signs I saw nothing in their appearance or conduct
that tended to prove them contemporaries of the cedars employed in
Solomon's Temple. The final cause to which these aged survivors
owed their preservation was explained to me in the evening by a
glorious old fellow (a Christian chief), who made me welcome in the
valley of Eden. In ancient times the whole range of the Lebanon
had been covered with cedars, and as the fertile plains beneath
became more and more infested by government officers and tyrants of
high and low degree, the people by degrees abandoned them and
flocked to the rugged mountains, which were less accessible to
their indolent oppressors. The cedar forests gradually shrank
under the axe of the encroaching multitudes, and seemed at last to
be on the point of disappearing entirely, when an aged chief who
ruled in this district, and who had witnessed the great change
effected even in his own lifetime, chose to say that some sign or
memorial should be left of the vast woods with which the mountains
had formerly been clad, and commanded accordingly that this group
of trees (which was probably situated at the highest point to which
the forest had reached) should remain untouched. The chief, it
seems, was not moved by the notion I have mentioned as prevailing
in the Greek Church, but rather by some sentiment of veneration for
a great natural feature - sentiment akin, perhaps, to that old and
earthborn religion, which made men bow down to creation before they
had yet learnt how to know and worship the Creator.
The chief of the valley in which I passed the night was a man of
large possessions, and he entertained me very sumptuously. He was
highly intelligent, and had had the sagacity to foresee that Europe
would intervene authoritatively in the affairs of Syria. Bearing
this idea in mind, and with a view to give his son an advantageous
start in the ambitious career for which he was destined, he had
hired for him a teacher of the Italian language, the only
accessible European tongue. The tutor, however, who was a native
of Syria, either did not know or did not choose to teach the
European forms of address, but contented himself with instructing
his pupil in the mere language of Italy. This circumstance gave me
an opportunity (the only one I ever had, or was likely to have
{46}) of hearing the phrases of Oriental courtesy in an European
tongue. The boy was about twelve or thirteen years old, and having
the advantage of being able to speak to me without the aid of an
interpreter, he took a prominent part in doing the honours of his
father's house.
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