Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/355

 and rough timber to build twenty like it after occidental methods. Such steep and clumsy stairs and ladders are harder to climb than mountains; for the climber crawls over and creeps under heavy beams, and fairly twists himself upward, getting an occasional peep down the dark well-hole, where the builders’ secret is hidden. Visitors wonder how pagodas are made to stand in an earthquake country, and why these spindling edifices should be built up without regard to the inevitable tremble, until they see in the hollow chamber, or well, an exaggerated tongue or pendulum hanging from the topmost beams.

This tongue, made of heavy beams bolted together in a mass, is equal to about half the weight of the whole structure. It descends nearly to the base of the pagoda, and at the shock of an earthquake the large pendulum slowly swings, the structure sways, and settles back safely to its base.

In a tall sheathed bell-tower near the pagoda there is a most interesting shrine where parents hang the garments of sick and dying children. The whole interior is filled with little kimonos and bibs, and the long rope of the gong overhead is covered with them, while tearful women cluster round the priests in the small interior, and a continuous service seems to go on before the altar. In the court-yard a large stone water-tank, sunk a few steps and covered with a pavilion roof, contains a stone tortoise pouring a constant stream of water into the reservoir, on whose surface the faithful, buying wooden shavings or prayer-papers from the priests, cast these petitions and go away content.

Others fill little bottles with the water and carry it home as a specific against many ills. In a pond near by live hundreds of turtles The kamé climb up on wooden platforms in the pond and sun themselves, but at the clap of the hand and the sight of popped beans floating 339