"The Ibis whome in Egypte Israel found, Last the foul Batt, of byrd and beast first bredde, According to the following account, the far-famed Cedar, the pride of Lebanon, is yielding to the destructive tooth of Time. "The cedar is a large and noble evergreen tree. Its lofty height, and its far extended branches, afford a spacious shelter and shade. Ezek. xxxi. 5, 6, 8. The wood is very valuable; is of a reddish colour, of an aromatic smell, and reputed incorruptible, which is owing to its bitter taste, which the worms cannot endure, and its resin, which pre-serves it from the injuries of the weather.* The ark of the covenant, and much of the temple of Solomon, and that of Diana, at Ephesus, were built of cedar. "The tree is much celebrated in Scripture. It is called the glory of Lebanon.' Isa. lx. 13. On that mountain it must in former times have flourished in great abundance. There are some now growing there which are prodigiously large. But travellers who have visited the place within these two or three centuries, and who describe the trees of vast size, inform us, that their number is diminished greatly; so that, as Isaiah, x. 19, says, a child may number them.'t Maundrel measured one of the largest size, Some cedar wood was found fresh in the temple of Utica, iu Barbary, above two thousand years old. + Peter Bellon in 1550 counted 28 25 and found it to be twelve yards and six inches in girt, and yet sound; and thirty-seven yards in the spread of its boughs. Gabriel Sionita, a very learned Syrian Maronite,* who assisted in editing the Paris Polyglott, a man worthy of all credit, thus describes the cedars of Mount Lebanon, which he had examined on the spot. The cedar grows on the most elevated part of the mountain, is taller than the pine, and so thick that five men together could scarcely fathom one. It shoots out its branches at ten or twelve feet from the ground; they are large and distant from each other, and are perpetually green. The wood is of a brown colour, very solid and incorruptible, if preserved from wet. The tree bears a small cone like that of the pine.' "The following is the account given of these cedars by the Abbé Binos, who visited them in the year 1778. Here I first discovered the celebrated cedars, which grow in an oval plain about an Italian mile in circumference. The largest stand at a considerable distance from each other, as if afraid their branches might be entangled. These trees raise their proud summits to the height of sixty, eighty, and a hundred feet. Three or four, when young, grow up sometimes together, and form at length, by uniting their sap, a tree of monstrous thickness. The trunk then assumes, generally, a square form. The thickness which I saw might be about thirty feet round; and this size was occasioned by several having been united when young. Six others, which are entirely insulated, and free from shoots, were much taller, and seem to have been indebted for their height to the undivided effects of their sap.' These cedars, formerly so numerous as to constitute a forest, are now almost entirely destroyed. M. Billardiere, who travelled thither in 1789, says that only seven of those of superior size and antiquity remain. The largest are eighty or ninety feet in height, and the trunks from eight to nine feet in diameter. These are preserved with religious strictness. The Maronites celebrate an annual festival under them, which is called the feast of cedars ;' and the patriarch of the order threatens with ecclesiastical censure, all who "Maronites are certain Eastern Christians who inhabit near Mount Libanus, in Syria. The name is derived from a town in the country called Maronia, or from St. Maron, who built a monastery there in the fifth century. Hannah Adams, View of Religions, 2d edit." presume to hurt or diminish the venerable remnants of ages long gone by." The Eagle naturally occupies a large comparative space in Dr. Harris's collections. "The name is derived from a verb which signifies > lacerate, or tear in pieces. "The eagle has always been considered as the king of birds on account of its great strength, rapidity and elevation of flight, natural ferocity, and the terror it inspires into its fellows of the air. Its voracity is so great that a large extent of territory is requisite for the supply of proper sustenance; Providence has therefore constituted it a solitary animal two pair of eagles are never found in the same neighbourhood, though the genus is dispersed through every quarter of the world. It seldom makes depredations on the habitations of mankind; preferring its own safety to the gratification of appetite. Neither does it ever make mean or inconsiderable conquests; the smaller and harmless birds being beneath its notice. It will, however, carry away a goose, or even a turkey. It has often been known to seize hares, young lambs, and kids; which latter, as well as fawns, it frequently destroys for the sake of drinking their blood, as it never drinks water in the natural state. Having slain an animal too large to be eaten at once, it devours or carries off a part, leaving the remain-. der for other creatures less delicate; for it never returns to feed upon the same carcass, neither will it ever devour carrion. "Its sight is quick, strong, and piercing to a proverb. "Jackson in his Account of Morocco, p. 62, says, that the VULTURE (nesser), except the ostrich, is the largest bird in Africa. They build their nests on lofty precipices, high rocks, and in dreary parts of the mountains. Mr. Bruce has called this bird the golden eagle,' but I apprehend that he has committed an error in denominating it an eagle, the generical name of which, in the Arabic language, is El Bezz.' On the other hand, Mr. SALT, Trav. in Abyssinia, says, Its general appearance in a natural state, together with the vigour and animation which it displays, incline me to think it more nearly allied in the natural system to the eagles, and I should therefore be inclined to call it the African bearded Eagle.' "In Job xxxix. 27, the natural history of the eagle is finely drawn up: "Is it at thy voice that the eagle soars? His eyes discern afar off. Even his young ones drink down blood; "Mrs. Barbauld has given a description of the eagle in the following lines: "The royal bird his lonely kingdom forms Amid the gathering clouds and sullen storms; And marks his destined victim from afar. And to the nest compels the struggling prey.' "Alluding to the popular opinion that the eagle assists its feeble young in their flight, by bearing them up on its own pinions, Moses represents Jehovah as saying, Exod. xix. 4, Ye have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto myself.' "When Balaam, Numb. xxiv. 21, delivered his predictions respecting the fate that awaited the nations which he then particularized, he said of the Kenites, Strong is thy dwelling, and thou puttest thy nest in the rock;' alluding to that princely bird, the eagle, which not only delights in soaring to the loftiest heights, but chooses the highest rocks, and most elevated mountains as desirable situations for erecting its nest. Comp. Hab. ii. 9, Obad. 4. "What Job says concerning the eagle, which is to be understood in a literal sense, 'Where the slain are, there is he,' our Saviour makes an allegory of, when he says, Matt. xxiv. 28, 'Wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together; that is, wherever the Jews are, who deal unfaithfully with GoD, there will also the Romans, who hore the eagle in their standard, be to execute vengeauce upon them. Comp. Luke xvii. 37. "The swiftness of the flight of the eagle is alluded to iu 6 several passages of Scripture; as Deut. xxviii. 49: The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from afar, from the end of the earth; as swift as the eagle flieth.' In the affecting lamentation of David over Saul and Jonathan, their impetuous and rapid career is described in forcible terms. 2 Sam. i. 23: They were swifter than eagles; they were stronger than lions.' Jeremiah (iv. 13), when he beheld in vision the march of Nebuchadnezzar, cried, 'Behold he shall come up as clouds, and his chariots shall be as a whirlwind. His horses are swifter than eagles. Wo unto us, for we are spoiled.' To the wide-expanded wings of the eagle, and the rapidity of his flight, the same prophet beautifully alludes in a subsequent chapter, where he describes the subversion of Moab by the same ruthless conqueror. Jer. xlviii. 40: Behold he shall fly as an eagle, and spread his wings over Moab. In the same manner he describes the sudden desolations of Ammon in the next chapter; but, when he turns his eye to the ruins of his own country, he exclaims in still more energetic language, Lam. iv. 19, 'Our persecutors are swifter than the eagles of the heavens.' "Under the same comparison, the patriarch Job describes the rapid flight of time, ix. 26: My days are passed away, as the eagle that hasteth to the prey.' The surprising rapidity with which the blessings of common Providence sometimes vanish from the grasp of the possessor is thus described by Solomon, Prov. xxx. 19: Riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle towards heaven.' "The flight of this bird is as sublime as it is rapid and impetuous. None of the feathered race soar so high. In his daring excursions he is said to leave the clouds of heaven and regions of thunder and lightning and tempest far beneath him, and to approach the very limits of ether. Alluding to this lofty soaring is the prophecy of Obadiah, ver. 4, concerning the pride and humiliation of Moab ; Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the Lord. The prophet Jeremiah, xlix. 16, pronounces the doom of Edom in similar terms: O thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, that holdest the height of the hill; though thou shouldst make thy nest high as the eagle, I will bring thee down from thence, saith the Lord.' |