Page:Illustrations of China and Its People vol. III.pdf/15

 while jagged rocks from amid the folds of the foliage shot up their bold cliffs in striking contrast. But it was just before reaching the richly-tilled lands of the Monastery that we came across the finest scene. Here, as we looked back, from the altitude of about 1,500 feet, the eye wandered over an endless multitude of hills. A single cloud rested on a distant summit, as if to watch the windings of a stream which ran, wrapped in the glory of the evening sun, like a belt of bright gold dividing the valleys, and girdling the far-off mountain sides. As the sun declined, the hill-tops seemed to melt and merge into the fiery clouds, deep shadows shot across the path, swallowing up the woody chasms, and warning us that night was near at hand. Darkness had set in before we reached the Monastery. Here we met with a cordial welcome, a hooded bonze in holy stole leaving his evening reckoning on his amber rosary to light us to our quarters. From him I gathered the startling intelligence that foreign champagne was better than Samshu, and with a parting salutation he left us for the night.

The Monastery of the Snowy Crevice (see No. 3) rests in a fertile valley on the margin of a pure mountain stream, and is overshadowed by hills clad in pine forests and bamboo. The stately tree in front is supposed to have been planted by the pious founder of the shrine about the end of the ninth century. The building has been often renewed since then, and so, perhaps, has the tree.

Every monastery is popularly supposed to be ancient, and some, according to tradition, were never built at all, but created for the pious of pre-historic times. One of the stories connected with this place relates that in 1264 a. j>. the Emperor Li-tsung dreamed a dream about the temple, and accordingly named it "The Famous Hall of Dreams." This formed one of the most important events in its history, for the dream was followed by substantial presents. There is also another legend which tells us of an anchorite, and of an emperor, who essayed in vain to slay the holy man, till at last he fell down and worshipped him because he had never come across anybody whom he could not slay before. This monarch had just put a million of the common sort of his subjects to death, and he was athirst at that time for some victim of rarer eminence and sanctity than any of the others whom he had brought to their end. He died a pious priest, and left some suitable presents behind him too. Something like this is not unknown even at the present time. There are monks, I am told, in those places, who have lived lives of crime, and who find it expedient to retire to these choice retreats to die pleasantly, chanting " Ometo Fuh." Such holy ones, rescued from the grasp of justice and the jaws of the pit, take good care to live as long as they can. Many of the priests of the Buddhist faith are doubtless, judged by its laws, good and true men, and the majority are hospitable, and civil to strangers. They seldom neglect, however, to let one know the value of the presents they have received from other foreigners who, on previous occasions, have visited their abodes.

At this place I was conducted by an aged monk to view the "Thousand Fathom Precipice." I had to cling to a tree and then look down into the abyss. In this position I was deafened by the roar of the Tseen-changyen Fall (see No. 2), but could discern nothing for a cloud of mist that floated beneath my feet. At last I was startled from my contemplation by a vulture that shot out from the face of the rock, and caught a tiny bird as it hovered above the cloud. I afterwards descended to the fall through a steep, shady path in the woods. The great height of the fall may be guessed by looking at the full-grown trees above. It exceeds 500 feet, and descends about as many more in cascades over the rocks before it reaches the valley. No picture can convey an idea of the romantic beauty of the place. The variously-coloured rocks were covered with ferns and flowering shrubs, and the water, broken over the mossy ledges, fell like the delicate folds of a bridal veil. Climbing over huge boulders and beneath bamboo clumps, I reached the stone basin below, where the spray was lit with a hundred rainbow hues, scattering a thousand gems on the ferns, which seemed to bend their leaves and catch the burden of the fall.

No. 4 presents another striking scene in Snowy Valley, the fall commonly known as " Sung-ing-day," and approached by a picturesque bridge of a single arch concealed beneath the creepers that overgrow it. The water here descends into a deep, narrow chasm, and groups of tall, dark pines look sombrely over the verge of this precipice into the dark abyss below, where the river seeks a new channel through a rough and broken bed. The peaceful cultivated hills above and the rugged foreground present a combination as rare as it is striking.

The costume of the women of Ningpo is represented in No. 6. Almost the only point in which this attire differs from that worn by the ladies further south is the fashion of dressing the hair.