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Cedar near twelve hundred years old ; and at Saguntum in Spain , in a cer- chap, ijtain Oratory consecrated to Diana, there were seen, in the days of Pliny ,
Beams of Juniper, that had been placed there by the founders of theTemple, who came from Zant two centuries before the destruction ofTroy. The great Sesostris, king of Egypt, built a vefsel of Cedar of twohundred and eighty cubits, all over gilded without and within: And thestatue of the goddefs in the famous Ephesine Temple was said to be ofthis material also, as was most of the timber-work of that gloriousstructure. Though as to the idol', mentioned in the Acts, (when themob rose up against the Apostle,) some will have it to be of Ebony, others,of a Vine-tree, the most unlikely of all the rest for the carver. TheShittim, mentioned in holy writ, is thought to have been a kind of Cedar *,of which' most precious utensils were formed.
As to the magnitude of Cedar-trees, we read of divers whose bodies-eight or nine persons could not embrace, as we shall show hereafter;not here to let pafs what Josephus relates Solomon planted in Judea ,who doubtlefs tried many experiments: of this nature, none being morekingly than that of planting for posterity. I do not speak of thosegrowing on the mountains of Lebanon , in the northern and colder tractsof Syria , or what store those forests of them then afforded.. But, as weare informed by that curious traveller Rauwolfius*, since confirmed also * In Ida--by the Virtuoso Monconys, there were not remaining above twenty-fiveof those stately trees; and since they were there, but sixteen of thatsmall number, as the ingenious Mr. Maundrell reports in his journeyfrom Aleppo to Jerusalem : There was yet, says he, abundance of youngtrees, and a single old one of a prodigious, size, twelve yards and six
inches in the girt, and thirty-seven yards in the spread of its boughs._
I suppose the same described by the late traveller Bruyn, who, speakingof the shadow of this umbrageous tree, alludes to that of Hosea xiy. 5,which, it is not improbable, might be one of those yet remaining in theplace, where that heroic Prince Solomon employed fourscore thousandhewers at work for the materials of only one temple and a palace ;a pregnant instance what time, negligence, and war will bring to ruin.
But to return to what is said of their present number; Le Bruyn, whomjust now we mentioned, makes them thirty-five or thirty-six, for he couldnot exactly tell; and pretends, like our Stonhenge on Salisbury plain*none could ever yet agree in their number.