as the treatment of the hair and various symbolic marks reveal, the art
is Japanese.

So mighty and beautiful the work is, that you will not for some time
notice the magnificent lotus-plants of bronze, fully fifteen feet high,
planted before the figure, on either side of the great tripod in which
incense-rods are burning.

Through an orifice in the right side of the enormous lotus-blossom on
which the Buddha is seated, you can enter into the statue. The interior
contains a little shrine of Kwannon, and a statue of the priest Yuten,
and a stone tablet bearing in Chinese characters the sacred formula,
Namu Amida Butsu.

A ladder enables the pilgrim to ascend into the interior of the colossus
as high as the shoulders, in which are two little windows commanding a
wide prospect of the grounds; while a priest, who acts as guide, states
the age of the statue to be six hundred and thirty years, and asks for
some small contribution to aid in the erection of a new temple to
shelter it from the weather.

For this Buddha once had a temple. A tidal wave following an earthquake
swept walls and roof away, but left the mighty Amida unmoved, still
meditating upon his lotus.

12

And we arrive before the far-famed Kamakura temple of Kwannon--Kwannon,
who yielded up her right to the Eternal Peace that she might save the
souls of men, and renounced Nirvana to suffer with humanity for other