Page:Japanese Gardens (Taylor).djvu/167

Rh Choin-in Temple garden as well as in the picture of Nami-Kawa San’s garden,. It springs, a solid arch of granite, from the shore to the island, and two mandarin ducks, too pretty to seem real, stand on it, admiring the images of themselves in the smooth water beneath.

Then there are stone bridges for highly finished gardens, architectural in character. Almost all temple grounds have them, with carved hand-rails. In other places, bridges are of wood of beautiful grain, or, it may be, lacquered red. The most famous one of this sort is the red lacquered bridge at Nikko by which only royalty may cross. There is great variety in the style of wooden bridges, for the Japanese are wonderful workers in that material. One quaint kind of bridge is of faggots, laid in bundles on horizontal cross-pieces, and then covered with sod. In the pretty garden of the Mikado Hotel, at Miyajima, a dozen of such structures crossed and recrossed the tumbling mountain torrent which formed the principal theme of the composition. This type is only suitable, of course, for the wilder sort of garden, and, when this place was aflame with autumn Maples, even the gods of fire and of water themselves need not have disdained its use.

But I love them all, the bridges of Japan, simple or ornate, of logs or of carven stone, of