Tuan, with some difficulty, made me understand it was the Temple of the five hundred and eight Buddhas, and as I went in, attended by a priest in the last stages of dirt and shabbiness, I saw rows upon rows of seated Buddhas greater than life-size, covered with gold leaf that shone out bright in the semi-darkness, with shaven heads and faces, sad and impassive, gay, and laughing, and frowning. Dead gods surely, for the roof is falling in, the hangings are tatters, and the dust of years lies thick on floor, on walls, on the Buddhas themselves. There was a pot of sand before one golden figure rather larger than the rest, and I burned incense there, bowing myself in the House of Rimmon, because I do not think that incense is often burned now before the dead god.
They are all dead these gods in the temples builded by a pious Emperor for his pious mother. The next I visited was a lamaserie, built in imitation of the Po-Ta-La in Lhasa. It climbs up the steep hill-side, story after story, with here and there on the various stages a pine-tree, and the wind whispers among its boughs that the Emperor who built and adorned it is long since dead, the very dynasty has passed away, and the gods are forgotten. Forgotten indeed. I got out of my cart at the bottom of the hill, and the gate opened to me, because the General had sent to say that one day that week a foreign woman was coming and she must have all attention, else I judge I might have waited in vain outside those doors. Inside is rather a gorgeous p'ia lou, flanked on either side by a couple of elephants. I cannot think the man who sculptured them could ever have seen an elephant, he must have done it from description, but he has contrived to put on those beasts such a very supercilious expression it made me smile just to look at them.
From that p'ia lou the monastery rises. Never in my life before have I seen such an effect of sheer steep high walls. I suppose it must be Tibetan, for it is not Chinese as I know the Chinese. Stage after stage it rose up, showing blank walls that once were pinkish red, with square places like windows, but they were not windows, they were evidently put there to catch the eye and deepen the effect of steepness. Stage after stage I climbed up steep and narrow steps that were closed alongside the wall, and Tuan, according to Chinese custom, supported my elbow, as if it were hardly likely I should be capable of taking another step. Also, according to his custom, he had engaged a ragged follower to carry my camera, and a half-naked little boy to bear the burden of the umbrella. I don't suppose I should have said anything under any circumstances, China had taught me my limitations where my servants were concerned, but that day I was glad of his aid, for this Tibetan temple meant to me steep climbing. I have no use for stairs. Stage after stage we went, and on each platform the view became wider, far down the valley I could see, and the hills rose range after range, softly rounded, rugged, fantastic, till they faded away in the far blue distance. I had thought the Nine Dragon Temple wonderful, but now I knew that those men of the Ming era who had built it had never dreamed of the glories of these mountains of Inner Mongolia. I was weary before I came to the last pine-tree, but still there was a great walled, flat-topped building towering far above me, its walls the faded pinkish red, on the edge of its far-away roof a gleam of gold.
The steps were so narrow, so steep, and so rugged, that if I had not been sure that never in my life should I come there again I should have declined to go up them, but I did go up, and at the top we came to a door, a door in the high blind wall that admitted us to a great courtyard with high walls towering all round it and a temple, one of the many temples in this building, in the centre. The temple was crowded with all manner of beautiful things, vases of cloisonné, figures overlaid with gold leaf, hangings of cut silk, the chair of the Dalai Lama in gold and carved lacquer-work, the mule-saddle used by the Emperor Ch'ien Lung, lanterns, incense burners, shrines, all heaped together in what seemed to me the wildest confusion, and everything was more than touched with the finger of decay. All the rich, red lacquer was perished, much of the china and earthenware was broken, the hangings were rotted and torn and ragged, the paint was peeling from stonework and wood, the copper and brass was green with rust. Ichabod! Ichabod! The gods are dead, the great Emperor is but a name.