The Beauties of Nikko--The Burial of Iyeyasu--The Approach to the
Great Shrines--The Yomei Gate--Gorgeous Decorations--Simplicity of
the Mausoleum--The Shrine of Iyemitsu--Religious Art of Japan and
India--An Earthquake--Beauties of Wood-carving.

KANAYA'S, NIKKO, June 21.

I have been at Nikko for nine days, and am therefore entitled to
use the word "Kek'ko!"

Nikko means "sunny splendour," and its beauties are celebrated in
poetry and art all over Japan. Mountains for a great part of the
year clothed or patched with snow, piled in great ranges round
Nantaizan, their monarch, worshipped as a god; forests of
magnificent timber; ravines and passes scarcely explored; dark
green lakes sleeping in endless serenity; the deep abyss of Kegon,
into which the waters of Chiuzenjii plunge from a height of 250
feet; the bright beauty of the falls of Kiri Furi, the loveliness
of the gardens of Dainichido; the sombre grandeur of the passes
through which the Daiyagawa forces its way from the upper regions;
a gorgeousness of azaleas and magnolias; and a luxuriousness of
vegetation perhaps unequalled in Japan, are only a few of the
attractions which surround the shrines of the two greatest Shoguns.

To a glorious resting-place on the hill-slope of Hotoke Iwa, sacred
since 767, when a Buddhist saint, called Shodo Shonin, visited it,
and declared the old Shinto deity of the mountain to be only a
manifestation of Buddha, Hidetada, the second Shogun of the
Tokugawa dynasty, conveyed the corpse of his father, Iyeyasu, in