When a place affords nothing for the contemplation of curiosity but the wrecks of former ages, it usually detains the footsteps of the traveller but a short time; and accordingly Maundrell and his companions quitted Baalbec early next morning, and, penetrating through the snowy defiles of Mount Lebanon into the maritime plains of Syria, arrived in two days at Tripoli. From hence, on the 9th of May, Maundrell departed with a guide to visit the famous cedars so frequently alluded to in the Scriptures, and which, from the prodigious longevity of the tree, may be those which the poets and prophets of Israel viewed with so much admiration. The extreme brevity of the original narrative permits us to describe this excursion in the traveller’s own words:—“Having gone for three hours across the plain of Tripoli, I arrived,” says he, “at the foot of Libanus; and from thence continually ascending, not without great fatigue, came in four hours and a half to a small village called Eden, and in two hours and a half more to the cedars. “These noble trees grow among the snow, near the highest part of Lebanon, and are remarkable as well for their own age and largeness as for those frequent allusions made to them in the Word of God. Here are some of them very old and of a prodigious bulk, and others younger of a smaller size. Of the former I could reckon up only sixteen, and the latter are very numerous. I measured one of the largest, and found it twelve yards six inches in girth, and yet sound, and thirty-seven yards in the spread of its boughs. At about five or six yards from the ground it was divided into five limbs, each of which was equal to a great tree.” Descending the mountain, and rejoining his friends at Tripoli, they departed thence together; and returning by the same road which they had pursued in their journey to Jerusalem, they arrived in a few days at Aleppo without accident or peril. Such is the history of that brief excursion, which, being ably and honestly described, has justly ranked Maundrell among celebrated travellers. The date of his death I have been unable to discover. This journey has been translated into several modern languages, and is held in no less estimation abroad than at home. END OF VOL. I.