"Some of the wonders still remain, as you will see," said Colonel Craig as he helped her into a jinrikisha. "When you have seen the Dai Butsu you will acknowledge that even a Japanese fishing village retains some of its ancient glory."
They bobbed along behind the huge spreading hats of the runners and presently entered a long avenue of trees to go through a temple gateway and a long courtyard.
Suddenly the runners stopped, and the visitors, looking up, saw the huge statue before them. One after another alighted from the jinrikishas and gathered around Mr. Montell and Colonel Craig.
"Isn't he enormous?" cried Mary Lee looking up at the colossal figure seated in a lotus flower.
"He is nearly fifty feet high," said the colonel.
"And he isn't in a temple, but just in plain out-of-doors," remarked Eleanor.
"There was a temple once," her uncle told her. "You can see some of the bases of its sixty-three pillars if you look for them. The great tidal wave destroyed it, and the surrounding buildings, away back in the fifteenth century. So far as we know the statue was cast about 1252. It is made of bronze. The eyes are four feet long and the distance across the lap from one knee to the other is thirty-five feet, so now you can get some idea of his bigness."
They all stood in silence looking up at the renowned figure with a real reverence. Nan slipped her hand into her Aunt Helen's. "I love his gentle smile," she whispered. "How placid he looks after all the great convulsions of nature, the ravages of time and all the desolating things that have happened around him."
Her aunt responded with a little pressure of the hand. "He is a lesson, dear, to all of us. Did the colonel read you the inscription at the gateway? I have written it down." She read from her note-book: "O stranger, whosoever thou art, and whatsoever be thy creed, when thou enterest this sanctuary remember that thou treadest upon ground hallowed by the worship of ages. This is the temple of Buddha and the gate of the Eternal, and should therefore be entered with reverence."
"Could any one feel anything else but reverence?" returned Nan. "And not only reverence but a real awe and certainly a great admiration."