THE CEDARS OF LEBANON
(SYRIA)
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
The Sheik of Eden, the last inhabited village towards the summit of Lebanon, was the maternal uncle of M. Mazoyer, my interpreter. Informed by his nephew of our arrival in Tripoli, the venerable sheik descended the mountain with his eldest son and a portion of his retinue; he came to visit me at the convent of the Franciscans, and offered me hospitality at his home in Eden. From Eden to the Cedars of Solomon it is only a three hours’ march; and if the snows that cover the mountains will permit us, we can visit these ancient trees that have spread their glory over all Lebanon and that are contemporaries of the great king; we accepted, and the start was arranged for the following day.
At five o’clock in the morning we were on horseback. The caravan, more numerous than usual, was preceded by the Sheik of Eden, an admirable old man whose elegance of manner, noble and easy politeness, and magnificent costume were far from suggesting an Arab chieftain; one would have called him a patriarch marching at the head of his tribe; he rode upon a mare of the desert whose golden-bay skin and floating mane would have made a worthy mount for a hero of Jerusalem; his son and his principalattendants caracoled upon magnificent stallions, a few paces before him; we came next, and then the long file of ourmoukresand our Saïs....
The sheik has sent three Arabs over the route to the Cedars to learn if the snow will permit us to approach those trees; the Arabs returning say that access is impracticable; there are fourteen feet of snow in a narrow valley which must be crossed before reaching the trees;—wishing to get as near as possible, I entreat the sheik to give me his son and several horsemen; I leave my wife and my caravan at Eden; I mount the strongest of my horses,Scham, and we areen routeat break of day;—a march of three hours over the crests of the mountains, or in the fields softened with melting snow. I arrive at the edge of the valley of the Saints, a deep gorge where the glance sweeps from the rocky height to a valley more confined, more sombre and more solemn even than that of Hamana; at the top of this valley, at the place where, after continually rising, it reaches the snows, a superb sheet of water falls, a hundred feet high and two or threetoiseswide; the entire valley resounds with this waterfall and the leaping torrents that it feeds; on every side the rocky flanks of the mountain stream with foam; we see almost beyond our vision, in the depths of the valley, two large villages the houses of which can scarcely be distinguished from the rocks rolled down by the torrent; the tops of the poplars and the mulberries from here look like tufts of reed or grass; we descend to the village of Beschieraï by paths cut in the rock, and so abrupt that one can hardly imagine that men willrisk themselves upon them; people do perish sometimes; a stone thrown from the crest where we stand would fall upon the roofs of these villages where we shall arrive after an hour’s descent; above the cascade and the snows, enormous fields of ice extend, undulating like vapours in tints greenish and blue by turns; in about a quarter of an hour towards the left in a half circular valley formed by the last mounts of Lebanon, we see a large, black blot upon the snow,—the famous group of cedars; they crown the brow of the mountain like a diadem; they mark the branching off of numerous and large valleys that descend from there; the sea and the sky are their horizon.
We put our horses to a gallop over the snow to get as near as possible to the forest; but on arriving five or six hundred steps from the trees, we plunge our horses up to their shoulders; we realize that the report of the Arabs is correct, and we must renounce the hope of touching these relics of the centuries and of nature; we alight and sit upon a rock to contemplate them.
THE CEDARS OF LEBANON.
THE CEDARS OF LEBANON.
THE CEDARS OF LEBANON.
These trees are the most celebrated natural monuments in the whole universe. Religion, poetry, and history have equally consecrated them. Holy Writ celebrates them in several places. They are one of the favourite images which the prophets employ. Solomon wished to consecrate them—doubtless on account of the renown of magnificence and sanctity that these prodigies of vegetation enjoyed at this epoch—to the ornamentation of the temple that he was the first to elevate to the one God. These were certainly the trees; for Ezekiel speaks of the cedars of Eden as the mostbeautiful of Lebanon. The Arabs of all sects have a traditional veneration for them. They attribute to these trees, not only a vegetative force that gives them eternal life, but even a soul that makes them give signs of wisdom, of foresight, similar to those of instinct in animals and intelligence in men. They know the seasons in advance; they move their enormous branches like human limbs, they spread or contract their boughs, they raise their branches towards the sky or incline them to the earth, according as the snow is preparing to fall or to melt. They are divine beings under the form of trees. They grow on this single spot of the mounts of Lebanon; they take root far beyond the region where all prolific vegetation dies. All this strikes the imagination of the Oriental people with astonishment, and I do not know that science is not even more astonished. Alas! however, Basan languishes and Carmel and the flower of Lebanon fade.—These trees diminish every century. Travellers formerly counted thirty or forty, later seventeen, and still later, about a dozen.—There are now only seven of those whose massive forms can presume to be contemporaneous with Biblical times. Around these old memorials of past ages, which know the history of the ground better than history herself, and which could tell us, if they could speak, of many empires, religions, and vanished human races, there remains still a little forest of cedars more yellow it appears to me than a group of four or five hundred trees or shrubs. Each year in the month of June the population of Beschieraï, Eden, and Kanobin, and all the villages of the neighbouring valleys, ascend to the cedarsand celebrate mass at their feet. How many prayers have resounded beneath their branches! And what more beautiful temple, what nearer altar than the sky! What more majestic and holier daïs than the highest plateau of Lebanon, the trunks of the cedars and the sacred boughs that have shaded and that will still shade so many human generations pronouncing differently the name of God, but who recognize him everywhere in his works and adore him in his manifestations of nature! And I, I also prayed in the presence of those trees. The harmonious wind that resounded through their sonorous branches played in my hair and froze upon my eyelids those tears of sorrow and adoration.
Voyage en Orient(Paris, 1843).
Voyage en Orient(Paris, 1843).