_September 2nd_.


Chance has favored us with a friendship as singular as it is rare:
that of the head bonzes of the temple of the _Jumping Tortoise_, where
we had witnessed last month such a surprising pilgrimage.

The approach to this place is as solitary now as it was thronged and
bustling on the evenings of the festival; and in broad daylight one is
surprised at the deathlike decay of the religious surroundings which
at night had seemed so full of life. Not a creature to be seen on the
time-worn granite steps; not a creature beneath the vast sumptuous
porticoes; the colors, the gold-work are dim with dust. To reach the
temple one must cross several deserted courtyards terraced on the
mountain side, pass through several solemn gateways, and up and up
endless stairs, rising far above the town and the noises of humanity
into a sacred region filled with innumerable tombs. On all the
pavements, in all the walls, lichen and stonecrop; and over all the
gray tint of extreme age spreads everywhere like a fall of ashes.

In a side temple near the entrance is enthroned a colossal Buddha
seated in his lotus--a gilded idol some forty-five or sixty feet high,
mounted on an enormous pedestal of bronze.

At length appears the last doorway with the two traditional giants,
guardians of the sacred court, which stand the one on the right hand,
the other on the left, shut up like wild beasts each one in a cage of
iron. They are in attitudes of fury, with fists upraised as if to
strike, and features atrociously fierce and distorted. Their bodies
are covered all over with bullets of crumbled paper which have been