Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/182

 sixth wonder also consists of a stone, but a stone of a more practically useful nature. It is called the Warm Rock—very flat and smooth, and forms the summit of a hill upon which there is a pavilion or kiosque for the benefit of travellers. Here they may rest and pass the night. However cold the weather may be, there is no stove, nor any need for one; the stone on which the resthouse stands diffuses its wonderful and benign warmth through every room in it, and the poorest may bask in its comfort. About the seventh wonder we believe that some slight uncertainty exists. There are two objects which are both entitled to the honour. One is simply a relic of Sakya "Ju-lai"—the Buddha who thus comes—in the form of a small chest or case of exquisitely fine workmanship. This is to be seen in a temple somewhere near the sea. The other is far more extraordinary, and we think there should not be a doubt of its claim to "wonder"-ship. It is a drop of the sweat of Buddha. Around the large temple where it is enshrined, for thirty paces square, not a blade of grass will grow; there are no trees, no flowers; the very birds and animals desert it, instinctively recoiling from profaning with their footfalls a plot of ground so holy. The association of ideas is not particularly happy, for the more natural impression would be that the presence of a relic of so benign a personage would have had a genial and fertilising effect, and instead of a bare blank patch we should have looked for a lovely oasis, gay with lotuses and summer flowers, and full of the song and gambols of those innocent creatures, the protection of whose helplessness forms so distinctive a feature of the gentle teachings of Ju-lai.