The Cedars

“ Every ravine was filled by mountain streams' foam—white with speed.
We descended all day and the weather grew more and more summer-like each mile. Ripe strawberries lured us from the warm banks. For the first time we came upon great groves of red cedar under which the trail ran very muddy and very slippery by reason of the hard roots of the cedars which never decay. Creeks that seemed to me a good field for placer mining came down from the left, but no one stopped to do more than pan a little gravel from a cut bank or a bar. ”

“ I crossed over the parade on the diagonal walk. It led near to a clump of cedars, black as ink in the moonlight, funereal at any time, and now many-fold more so than in the sunlight. The silent cedars did indeed surround a grave. Age-old themselves, they grew on the brink of a grave that was even older—the inverted cone of a geyser, extinct no man may say how long. ”

“ A great company of these birds had been for a week in the hillside woods, sociably inclined but not intimately associated. The snow brought them together, and after an hour of vain discussion, as a compact flock, they left the woods and flew in a direct line for a cluster of cedars half a mile away. It appeared to me that some one of these birds made the suggestion that the cedars were a better protection than half-leaved oak woods, and all took up with it. At any rate, that is where the birds went and remained until the snow-squall was over. ”

“ Shortly the wind started moaning through the cedars, and we imagined we could feel a change in the atmosphere, and brother suggested we crawl in under our boat and have a sleep. So we straightened the soft cedar boughs around as best we could on the dry sand, crawled in, letting the boat down over us. We wrapped ourselves around each other very closely. ”

“ The trail here was so wide that Joe could trot ahead and ask Mills.
“Yes, they are cedars,” Mills said. “They call ’em white cedars, I believe. The wood is much softer than your slow-growing cedar in the East. It’s a great forest, isn’t it?” ”

“ That cedar stood as a stately beam and pillar in nature's temple, but the glory of the latter house was greater than the glory of the former. How many of our souls are like these cedars of God! His axes of trial have stripped and bared them,—we see no reason for dealings so dark and mysterious; but He has a noble end and object in view—to set them as everlasting pillars and rafters in His heavenly temple, to make them "a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of our God!" ”

“ Everything was marked by stagnation and retrogression: the people are habitans, the clergy curés.
We ran the Cedars, a magnificent rapid, superior in beauty to the Grand Rapids at Niagara, and afterwards those of the Côteau du Lac and the Split Rock, but were obliged to anchor at La Chine, as its celebrated cataract can only be shot by daylight. ”

“ A living landscape, vivid and beautiful, lay spread before their eyes. Great yellow pines like the masts of ships towered above them. Cedars, the rivals of Lebanon, mingled their branches with the live oak, tulip, and walnut trees, while closer to mother earth clung the sassafras and witch hazel. Scuppernong grapes flung their vines, loaded with ripening fruit, from limb to limb of the copper beeches and bathed their trailing branches in the briny waters of the Occam.
Dotted all around were the log cabins left by the previous settlers. ”

“ The cedars are treasure-houses in winter, and many birds find shelter among the thick foliage, and feast upon the plentiful supply of berries, when elsewhere there seems little that could keep a bird’s life in its body. When the tinkling of breaking icicles is taken up by the wind and 34 re-echoed from the tops of the cedars, you may know that a flock of purple finches is near, and so greedy and busy are they that you may approach within a few feet. These birds are unfortunately named, as there is nothing purple about their plumage. ”

“ Accustomed as she was to the street lights of Riverside, the darkness was thick and strange, for the denseness of the trees about Dark Cedars shut out even the sky, with its stars, from the windows. But Mary Louise closed her eyes immediately, resolved not to let anything so trivial bother her. ”

“ As cedar trees - Gabriel Sionita, a very learned Syrian Maronite, who assisted in editing the Paris Polyglot, 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. ”

“ Cedars of every size and form were above, around, and underneath us; firs more beautiful and more various than I had ever seen, were in equal abundance, but I know not whether they were really such as I had never seen in Europe, or only in infinitely greater splendour and perfection of growth; the species called the hemlock is, I think, second to the cedar only, in magnificence. Oak and beech, with innumerable roses and wild vines, hanging in beautiful confusion among their branches, were in many places scattered among the evergreens. ”

“ Little obstructs your passage, now that the firm ice is underfoot, unless it is the too close set tree trunks. Goldthread and partridge berry creep in the moss that mounds about the very stumps of the cedars, but no other vine or shrub seems to have the vitality to grow here, or if it had it has wisely used it to flee to more sunny uplands. Not even in tropical jungles have I seen the struggle for existence so fierce as it is among these too closely set swamp cedars. One in ten eventually survives and makes a marketable growth. ”

“ The cedars, even those in the garden of Eden, which we may suppose were the best of the kind, would not hide him, but his top branches outshot theirs. 2. He was a spreading cedar; his branches did not only run up in height, but run out in breadth, denoting that this mighty prince was not only exalted to great dignity and honour, and had a name above the names of the great men of the earth, but that he obtained great dominion and power ”

“ No ordinary impulse would bring a man to such a place in this black hour before the dawn—particularly Paredes, who spoke constantly of his superstitious nature, who advertised a thorough-paced fear of the Cedars. ”

“ THE CASE AGAINST BOBBY Bobby hurried down the road in the direction of the Cedars. Always he tried desperately to recall what had occurred during those black hours last night and this morning before he had awakened in the empty house near his grandfather's home. All that remained were his sensation of travel in a swift vehicle, his impression of standing in the forest near the Cedars, his glimpse of the masked figure which he had called his conscience, the echo in his brain of a dream-like voice saying: "Take off your shoes and carry them in your hand. Always do that. It's the only safe way." ”

“ 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 ”

“ They riot in lawless growth, these runaway trees, and welcome their boon companions, crows and jays, spreading an autumnal [127] feast for their delectation and holding the fragments far into the winter that none may go away from a visit hungry. The pasture cedars, that love the river air, but may not live on the marsh, have built seaside colonies on these hillocks and spread a feast of blue cedar berries for all passing flocks. Here the robins, now gathering for their winter flight south, flock and feed, holding their ground at the approach of man, crying “Tut, tut!” ”

“ They illustrate how a species, which may be assumed to have originated in one region, in the course of its wanderings may undergo slight changes until, at a later stage when the plants have disappeared from parts of the once-continuous area, the remaining outlying groups of individuals are spoken of under different specific names. The cedars of Lebanon, known as Cedrus libani, occur as isolated groups on the Lebanon hills as outliers of the larger forests of the Taunus 250 miles distant. The African cedar, Cedrus atlantica, is separated from the Lebanon cedar by a distance of 1400 miles. ”

“ How clean and unworn and immortal the woods seemed to be!—the lofty cedars in full bloom laden with golden pollen and their washed plumes shining; the pines rocking gently and settling back into rest, and the evening sunbeams spangling on the broad leaves of the madroños, their tracery of yellow boughs relieved against dusky thickets of Chestnut Oak; liverworts, lycopodiums, ferns were exulting in glorious revival, and every moss that had ever lived seemed to be coming crowding back from the dead to clothe each trunk and stone in living green. ”

“ Some Cedars produce only male catkins, and these in immense abundance; others, only female catkins; and some both. There are trees of vigorous growth at various places, which, though upwards of one hundred years old, have scarcely ever produced either male or female catkins. The duration of the Cedar is supposed to extend to several centuries."
The Cedar is cultivated from seeds and berries. Any climate suits it, provided it meet with a sandy soil; though it grows better in cold than in warm climates, as its cultivation is more successful in Scotland than in England. ”

“ Fence posts of white cedar, and cedar pails, shingles, and the like, have a great reputation for durability.
The peculiarity of a red cedar is its fruit. Instead of a cone, a blue, juicy, sweet berry follows the blossoming of this tree. The foliage, too, is erratic. Minute leaves of the scale form, discovered in the other cedars, are found here on most twigs. They are still smaller, and the twigs are much smaller. But on new shoots, and often on a whole branch, the leaves are needle-like, one-half to three-quarters of an inch long, and spreading as the leaves of a spruce. ”

“ She wished for the enchanted horse
of which her brother had read to her so many
years before on the front piazza of the house
behind the cedars, that she might fly through the air
to her dying mother's side. She determined to go
at once to Patesville. ”

“ The red cedar usually attains a height of about thirty to forty feet, but in favourable situations it grows still larger. The soil which it loves best is of a stony, and often sterile character, and dry barren hill-tops are frequently covered with cedars, while the more moist and fertile valleys between possess a sylva of a far different character. ”

“ The Cedar is frequently found growing in churchyards, beside the Yew tree, and a dark, gloomy tree it is. The trunk is covered with a thick rough bark of a pale greenish brown colour, but on the branches this bark is thin and flaky. The Cedar grows very slowly. The tree may be a hundred years old before it produces any seeds, though you sometimes find seedless cones on Cedars that are twenty-five to thirty years old.
The leaves (2) are evergreen, and usually remain on the twigs for four or five years. They grow in tufts, like those of the Larch, on the upper side of the twig ”

“ In the forest they could speak no more of love.
But Bobby, hand in hand with her as they hurried after the others, received a new strength. He saw as a condition to their happiness the unveiling of the mystery at the Cedars. He gathered his courage for that task. He would not give way even before the memory of all that he had experienced, even before the return of his grandfather, even before the revelation toward which they walked. ”

“ He would have abandoned the ice-boat but for unwillingness to risk the fruit of their day's journey. They must be near the swamp and the creek now; it was scarcely possible they could have passed without recognising the cove whence they had issued in the morning; and yet there was a chance. For the weather was extremely thick, and daylight was fading quickly: the disguise of drifts is bewildering, even to the most practised eye.
'Ha! there are our cedars at last!' exclaimed Arthur. 'How the snow has buried them; they look stunted. ”

“ Cedar of Lebanon.
The Cedar varies greatly—no tree more so—in height and [Pg 165] general outline, according to situation and environment, and though the stature of well-grown trees in this country may be correctly stated as from 50 to 80 feet, we are not without examples of 100 and 120 feet where the conditions have been specially favourable. There is one of 120 feet at Strathfieldsaye, and among the numerous fine Cedars at Goodwood there is the celebrated Great Cedar, 90 feet high, with a bole 25 feet in circumference, and a broad conical head whose base has a diameter of 130 feet. ”

“ The Maronites say that the snows have no sooner begun to fall than these Cedars, whose boughs in their infinite number are all so equal in height that they appear to have been shorn, and form, as we have said, a sort of wheel or parasol,—than these Cedars, I say, never fail at that time to change their figure. The branches which before spread themselves rise insensibly, gathering together it may be said, and turn their points upward towards Heaven, forming altogether a pyramid. ”

“ At the end of a dry, uphill ride over barren country Jean Isbel unpacked to camp at the edge of the cedars where a little rocky canyon green with willow and cottonwood, promised water and grass. ”