A former governor of Lebanon, Rustum Pasha, protected this grove against roving animals by a well-built stone wall, and in recent years the number of young trees has consequently slightly increased. But the really old cedars grow fewer century by century; indeed, young and old together, their number is pathetically few. Twelve of the very largest are usually counted as the patriarchs of the grove. The mountaineers say that these had their origin when Christ and the eleven faithful Disciples once visited Lebanon, and each stuck his staff into the earth, where it took root and became an undying cedar. In all there are about four hundred trees. A local tradition says that they can never be counted twice alike; and, in fact, I have yet to find two travelers who agree as to the number. We need not, however, seek a miraculous explanation of this peculiar lack of unanimity. It is doubtless due to the fact that several trunks will grow so close together that no one can say whether they should be considered as a single tree, or as two or more. When no fewer than seven trunks almost touch at the bottom, it is quite impossible to tell whether they sprang originally from one seed or from many. Yet though the cedars are few in number, these few are kingly trees. Their height is never more than a hundred feet; but some have trunks over forty feet around, and mighty, wide-spreading limbs which cover a circle two or three hundred feet in circumference. Those which have been unhindered in their growth are tall and symmetrical; others are gnarled and knotted, with room for the Swiss Family Robinson to keep house in their great forks. Some years ago a monk lived in a hollow of one of the trunks. When you climb a little way into a cedar and look out over the whorl of horizontal branches, the upper surface seems as smooth and soft as a rug, upon which have apparently fallen the uplifted cones. Indeed, the close-growing foliage will bear you almost as well as a carpeted floor. Eighty feet above the ground, I have thrown myself carelessly down, not upon a bough, but upon just the network of interlacing twigs, and rested as securely as if I had been lying in an enormous hammock. [Illustration: The Cedar Mountain. The grove shows as a small, dark patch at the right] [Illustration: The source of the Kadisha River. The rocks in the background mark the edge of the plateau on which are situated the Cedars of Lebanon]