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256 The second was the counterpart of the first in all, save that his face was covered by a hideous, frowning mask, his raised right hand was open, with the palm turned full toward the spectator, and with his foot he trampled a snarling and struggling yellow and black spotted tiger. We asked the meaning of these giant figures of our obsequious Chinese attendant, and, as before, he told us a cock-and-bull story as gigantic in proportion as the figures themselves. The excuses urged in his behalf in the first instance are equally good in this.

We ascertained that the statues, like the phantom horsemen, despite their imposing appearance, were nothing but rattan, tissue and gilt paper, and bits of looking-glass—trifles light as air, almost, which even a breath might knock over and demolish. If they were intended to represent ghosts of the mighty dead of the days when there were giants in the land, they came near the mark; for anything more thin and unsubstantial to all the senses, save that of sight, could never have been conceived. Only the cunning hand of a celestial artist could have put them together, preserved their anatomical proportions, and made them stand there, erect, the very impersonation of hollow imposture. We noticed that the celestial crowd laughed and talked, and wandered about without the slightest regard for the religious character of the place, and we came away amused and interested, but not a whit the wiser for any insight into the hidden meaning of all this pageant—if any meaning there was—than when we came.