"Assuredly."
They all alighted from the carriage and began the ascent. At the top they confronted a queer gateway.
"Is this what they call a tori-i?" asked Nan.
"No, it is merely a gateway in the ordinary sense," she was told.
"We must stop and look at it," Miss Helen decided, and they all stood looking up at the strange structure.
"What an odd roof," Mary Lee observed, as she regarded the peaked pagoda-like affair.
"And such carving," exclaimed Nan. "Do look at all those queer gargoylish lions' heads, and see the dragons on the panels; snakes, too."
"And there is Fuji." Miss Helen, who was resting after her exhausting climb, and was enjoying the view, directed their attention to the great mountain whose dim peak arose above the town at their feet.
Nan turned from her regard of snakes and dragons that she might look off at the scene. "No wonder one sees Fuji on fans and panels and pretty nearly everything in Japan," said she. "I don't wonder the Japanese honor and adore their wonderful mountain."
After giving further examination to the gateway, they all walked on, presently coming to another one which showed more dragons and gargoyles. Through this they passed to enter a sort of courtyard. The girls looked with curiosity at an array of stone objects which they supposed to be monuments. "What are they?" Mary Lee asked.