Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/39

 and is known as the plant which nourishes the spirit. Its leaves resemble the water-grass called kû; it grows separately, and a single blade of it is sufficient to revive a thousand corpses.' Then the Emperor ordered an expedition to go and procure some of it, and sent Hsü Fu with three thousand boys and the same number of girls over the sea in search of the island Tsû Chou. They did not return, and nobody knew what became of them. But some time afterwards, a man named Shên Hsi having attained to immortality, the Yellow Emperor and Lao-tzŭ sent Hsü Fu in a chariot drawn by white tigers, Tu-shih Chün in a chariot drawn by dragons, and Po-yen Chih in a chariot drawn by white stags, to receive Shên Hsi; after doing which they all returned together. Therefore it became known that Hsü Fu had attained to immortality. Later, in the reign of Hsüan Tsung, of the T'ang dynasty, there was a scholar who was afflicted with a very strange disease, half of his body being dried up and black. As the imperial physicians could make nothing of the case, the patient called his friends together and said, 'My body being in this condition, how can I live any longer? Now I hear that in the Eastern Sea there is an abode of Immortals, and it seems to me that I might go and beg them for a prescription to cure me.' His family were one and all against the project; he insisted, however, and, taking a servant and a supply of provisions with him, he soon arrived at Têng-chou [near Chefoo] on the sea-coast. There he found an empty boat in which he put all the things he had brought with him, hoisted sail, and went whither the wind carried him. In ten days' time he came in sight of a solitary island, on which there were several hundreds of people, all engaged