Page:The lives of celebrated travellers (Volume 1).djvu/300

 of Zisos, the god of travellers, hewn out of the solid rock, with a lamp burning before it, and wreaths of flowers adorning its brows. At a little distance from the image of the god stood a basin full of water, in which such travellers performed their ablutions as designed to light the sacred lamps, or make any other offering in honour of the divinity.

Towards the afternoon of the first day's journey they arrived at the harbour of Omura, on the shore of which they observed the smoke of a small volcano. Pearl oysters were found in this bay; and the sands upon the coast had once been strewn with gold, but the encroachment of the sea had inundated this El Doradian beach. Next morning they passed within sight of a prodigious camphor-tree, not less than thirty-six feet in circumference, standing upon the summit of a craggy.and pointed hill; and soon afterward arrived at a village famous for its hot-baths. After passing through another village, they reached a celebrated porcelain manufactory, where the clay used was of a fat-coloured white, requiring much kneading, washing, and cleansing, before it could be employed in the formation of the finer and more transparent vessels. The vast labour required in this manufacture gave rise to the old saying, that porcelain was formed of human bones.

The country through which they now travelled was agreeably diversified with hill and dale, cultivated like a garden, and sprinkled with beautiful fields of rice, enclosed by rows of the tea-shrub, planted at a short distance from the road. On the next day they entered a plain country, watered by numerous rivers, and laid out in rice-fields like the former. In passing through this district they had for the first time an opportunity of observing the form and features of the women of the province of Fisen. Though already mothers, and attended by a numerous progeny, they were so diminutive in stature that they appeared to be so many girls, while