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 and built up in others, so as to render it suitable for a Buddhist shrine. A broad granite platform surmounted by a flight of steps leads us into the upper chamber, and there the goddess may be seen, seated on a huge lotus-flower; sculp- tured, so they tell us, by no human hands, and discovered in situ within the cave. The priests placed implicit faith in the story, but they could not be persuaded to believe that the flower might be the fossil of a pre-historic lotus of monstrous dimensions. Barbarians might credit such childish fables as that flowers or fishes can be turned into stone, but not the enlightened followers of Buddha. No; they say the lotus was created in the cave for Kwan-yin to sit upon; there was no getting over that.

According to their account this goddess of mercy has a marvellous history. She first appeared on earth in the centre of the world, that is China, as the daughter of a Chinaman named '* Shi-kin," and she was made visible to mortal eyes as a child of the Emperor Miao-Chwang. The sovereign ordered her to marry, and this she stedfastly refused to do, thus vio- lating the native usages, whereupon the dutiful parent put her remorselessly to death. But this measure, contrary to Miao- Chwang's expectation, only caused his daughter to be promoted into the proud position she now fills. Afterwards Kwan-yin is said to have visited the infernal regions, where the presence of such transcendent goodness and beauty produced an in- stantaneous effect. The instruments of torture dropped from the hands of the executioners, the guilty were liberated, and hell was transformed into paradise itself. The goddess now looks down with a benign expression from her seat upon the lotus throne, but she seems to be urgently in need of repairs.

The priests who dwell within the cave, sit overlooking the