Page:Japanese Gardens (Taylor).djvu/271

Rh the building of its temple. But, breathless or not, the place is awe-inspiring with the true sense of religion—though of an alien faith—in its great hall and its huge, heaven-reaching Pines.

The same thing one felt at Nikko, in the splendid temple grounds there, amid the finest Cryptomerias in the world, but we who were conscientious had little time to enjoy them, so hard at work were we kept examining the splendid details of the buildings they surround.

Gongen Temple, beside Lake Hakone, however, was a different matter. Every day, and sometimes twice a day, did we wander about its Cryptomeria-shaded paths, out to the end where the great trees grew smaller, and the golden light of the West empurpled the slim trunks silhouetted against it; and then on, through the Hydrangea-bordered track, to the ‘corner’ above the lake, where peerless Fuji, a dream mountain, an opalescent cone of colour and mist, seemed to float among the clouds.

Then also, in spite of an untoward adventure there, I must name the park-like grounds about the great Daibutsu at Kamakura. The monstrous bronze Buddha had not touched any of us, so ‘tourist-y’ it had seemed, until we had climbed up the dusty staircase and looked out of the little window at the back on to the green tops of the group of Cherry trees below. And then, suddenly, I had been transported back to my