[Footnote 136: In the last century twenty large cedars still
remained, (Voyage de la Roque, tom. i. p. 68 - 76;) at
present they are reduced to four or five, (Volney, tom. i.
p. 264.) These trees, so famous in Scripture, were guarded
by excommunication: the wood was sparingly borrowed for
small crosses, &c.; an annual mass was chanted under their
shade; and they were endowed by the Syrians with a sensitive
power of erecting their branches to repel the snow, to which
Mount Libanus is less faithful than it is painted by
Tacitus: inter ardores opacum fidumque nivibus - a daring
metaphor, (Hist. v. 6.)]