The Largest of the Cedars, Mount Lebanon
Object Name
Category
Photographs
Date
c. 1860
Medium
albumen print
Credit Line
Malcolmson Collection. Gift of Harry and Ann Malcolmson in partnership with a private donor, 2014
Object Number
2014/549
Location
Not currently on display but Available for viewing on Wednesdays from 1-4:30 in the Prints and Drawings Study Centre
Dimensions
Image: 15.3 × 22.5 cm (6 × 8 7/8 in.)
Mount: 31.8 × 44 cm (12 1/2 × 17 5/16 in.)
Mount: 31.8 × 44 cm (12 1/2 × 17 5/16 in.)
Signature, Inscriptions, and Markings
Inscription
verso, left to right in graphite at bottom of mount; COL 10/81 #111 Francis Frith Vol. II Lower Egypt, Thebes and the Pyramids; trc: #1210
Markings
recto, imprint below image on mount: The Largest of the Cedars./ Mount Lebanon.
On separate sheet attached to back of frame, imprinted text: THE LARGEST OF THE CEDARS OF LEBANON./ We shall present our readers, hereafter, with a view of the entire grove of "The Cedars."/ The tree now represented is, upon the whole, the noblest of the ten or twelve "venerables"/ now standing. It measures forty feet in circumference, near the roots. It may be observed/ that the natural growth of the cedar is a straight single trunk, almost like that of a Norway/ pine, and such are eight out of ten of the young trees in this grove; but the tree which/ I have represented - in the common with every one of the very old ones now standing - is a/ many-stemmed, fantastic, wide-spreading giant: and I like to believe that this very irregularity of form-/ unfitting them for temple-timber when their contemporaries were cut-has saved them for the poet-/worship of the 10th century!/
With the exception of these dozen, perhaps none of the trees in the grove are of a greater age than/ two or three centuries: there are probably two hundred or three hundred of a much younger growth. They form/ a compact little forest, "standing mostly upon four small, contiguous, rocky knolls, within a compass of less/ than forty rods in diameter." There is no underwood, but the ground is strewn thickly with the fallen leaflets and/ catkins. The wood is white, and has an agreeable odour, but bears no comparison with the red cedar of America./
The cedars are situated, according to Russegger, at an elevation of 6000 Paris feet above the sea-/ equivalent to 6400 English feet. The peaks of the mountain above rise nearly 8000 feet higher. The/ ampitheatre which they occupy "is of itself a great temple of nature, the most vast and magnificent of all/ the recesses of Lebanon." The peaks which tower over them retain the snows through the greater part of the year, and the grove itself is only accessible during the summer months. The spot has from time immemorial/ been held in some degree of sanctity; indeed in former centuries, as Dr. Robinson informs us, "the Patriarch of the/ Maronites imposed various ecclesiastical penalties, and even excommunication, upon any Christian who should cut/ or injure the sacred trees. The Maronites used also to celebrate in the grove the festival of the Transfiguration, when/ the Patriarch himself officiated, and said mass before a rude altar of stones."
We cannot wonder that so few trees which can claim very great antiquity remain upon these mountains,/ when we consider the high repute in which the wood was held both by the Jewish and heathen nations. The/ Temple of Solomon was rich in beams of cedar; David's palace was built with it; and so lavishly was this costly wood employed in one of Solomon's palaces, that it is called "the house of the forest of Lebanon."/ Diodorus Siculus relates that Lebanon was full of cedars, and firs, and cypresses of wonderful size and beauty; but at the present day only a very few localities have been authenticated as presenting any growth of these trees worth/ mentioning. Suetzen, in 1805, speaks of having discovered two groves of greater extent, and so other travellers,/ but none, I think, report any individual trees at all to compare with the finest of these, which are usually visited.
One of the grandest and most picturesque gorges of Lebanon takes its rise - along the sacred stream, El/ Kadisha, which runs through it - in the recess at the back of the cedars. A little below the grove overlooking the/ chasm stands a village, which is called "Eden."
The day which I spent at the Cedars was one of the most delightful that I ever enjoyed. The delicious/ temperature of this elevation, the songs of the nightingales which abound in the grove, the scent of the timber and/ fallen leaves, and, above all, the "spiritus" of this half-hallowed place - the fragrant fame which these wide-reaching/ venerable boughs are seen, as it were, to scatter over the wide world below - combine to render the cedar grove of/ Lebanon, in the beginning of June, one of the most enchanting spots on earth.
On separate sheet attached to back of frame, imprinted text: THE LARGEST OF THE CEDARS OF LEBANON./ We shall present our readers, hereafter, with a view of the entire grove of "The Cedars."/ The tree now represented is, upon the whole, the noblest of the ten or twelve "venerables"/ now standing. It measures forty feet in circumference, near the roots. It may be observed/ that the natural growth of the cedar is a straight single trunk, almost like that of a Norway/ pine, and such are eight out of ten of the young trees in this grove; but the tree which/ I have represented - in the common with every one of the very old ones now standing - is a/ many-stemmed, fantastic, wide-spreading giant: and I like to believe that this very irregularity of form-/ unfitting them for temple-timber when their contemporaries were cut-has saved them for the poet-/worship of the 10th century!/
With the exception of these dozen, perhaps none of the trees in the grove are of a greater age than/ two or three centuries: there are probably two hundred or three hundred of a much younger growth. They form/ a compact little forest, "standing mostly upon four small, contiguous, rocky knolls, within a compass of less/ than forty rods in diameter." There is no underwood, but the ground is strewn thickly with the fallen leaflets and/ catkins. The wood is white, and has an agreeable odour, but bears no comparison with the red cedar of America./
The cedars are situated, according to Russegger, at an elevation of 6000 Paris feet above the sea-/ equivalent to 6400 English feet. The peaks of the mountain above rise nearly 8000 feet higher. The/ ampitheatre which they occupy "is of itself a great temple of nature, the most vast and magnificent of all/ the recesses of Lebanon." The peaks which tower over them retain the snows through the greater part of the year, and the grove itself is only accessible during the summer months. The spot has from time immemorial/ been held in some degree of sanctity; indeed in former centuries, as Dr. Robinson informs us, "the Patriarch of the/ Maronites imposed various ecclesiastical penalties, and even excommunication, upon any Christian who should cut/ or injure the sacred trees. The Maronites used also to celebrate in the grove the festival of the Transfiguration, when/ the Patriarch himself officiated, and said mass before a rude altar of stones."
We cannot wonder that so few trees which can claim very great antiquity remain upon these mountains,/ when we consider the high repute in which the wood was held both by the Jewish and heathen nations. The/ Temple of Solomon was rich in beams of cedar; David's palace was built with it; and so lavishly was this costly wood employed in one of Solomon's palaces, that it is called "the house of the forest of Lebanon."/ Diodorus Siculus relates that Lebanon was full of cedars, and firs, and cypresses of wonderful size and beauty; but at the present day only a very few localities have been authenticated as presenting any growth of these trees worth/ mentioning. Suetzen, in 1805, speaks of having discovered two groves of greater extent, and so other travellers,/ but none, I think, report any individual trees at all to compare with the finest of these, which are usually visited.
One of the grandest and most picturesque gorges of Lebanon takes its rise - along the sacred stream, El/ Kadisha, which runs through it - in the recess at the back of the cedars. A little below the grove overlooking the/ chasm stands a village, which is called "Eden."
The day which I spent at the Cedars was one of the most delightful that I ever enjoyed. The delicious/ temperature of this elevation, the songs of the nightingales which abound in the grove, the scent of the timber and/ fallen leaves, and, above all, the "spiritus" of this half-hallowed place - the fragrant fame which these wide-reaching/ venerable boughs are seen, as it were, to scatter over the wide world below - combine to render the cedar grove of/ Lebanon, in the beginning of June, one of the most enchanting spots on earth.