"Then, though this temple seemed clean on first arrival by comparison with Chinese inns, its dirt now has a very materialising effect upon one's susceptibilities. It is beautifully situated on a spur of the mountain, with an amphitheatre of mountain-peaks girdling it in except on one side, where it looks down on the lesser hills and rivers we came up from. There are trees, and, we are assured, tigers, a man having been eaten by one ten days ago. But as I am also told eight men together were going up a peak not far from here, and of the eight five were killed by tigers, I am not quite sure whether one can believe everything one is told on Omi-shan. At all events, the tiger-mosquitoes seem a more real danger at present. We had sixteen nights in Chinese inns to get here from Chungking, travelling always westward; so I cannot think many Europeans will come, till there are steamers running to Chungking, and Cook has organised through-tickets. But the chief priest thinks if he could only do these rooms up many foreigners would come, and all give him many taels, and then the temples could all be restored."
JACK (LONG-HAIRED SHANTUNG TERRIER).
By Mrs. Archibald Little.
SACRED TIGER.
By Mr. Upcraft.
There are many wonders upon this sacred mountain, one the so-called Glory of Buddha, which we saw every afternoon during the fortnight in August we spent on its summit. Another, more puzzling to me, we only saw once. We were called out about nine o'clock on a keen, frosty night to see the lamps of Kiating, the city ten thousand feet below us, that had come up to be lighted. Some rich donor has given the lamps of Kiating particularly high lamp-posts to facilitate this miracle. Certainly, on each out-jutting spur of the mountain, as we looked down from the edge of the great precipice, we saw a large luminous light apparently quite stationary, and in effect recalling the lamps of Piccadilly at night. Some people say this must be caused by electricity. Certainly, on Mount Omi we always seemed to look down upon the storms of thunder and lightning that evening after evening cooled the hot country below us. But the most beautiful sight was to turn away from the grand views as far as the eye could reach over the rivers and hills and cities of China, and, standing on the verge of the precipice, look just in the other direction, across the sea of mountains with serrated edges or slanting-backs, two flat-topped table-mountains conspicuous among them, till there at last up in the sky, "as if stood upon a table for us to look at," as some Chinaman said centuries ago, stood the long range of the snowy giants of Tibet, with great glaciers clinging to their sides, and catching the first rosy light of morning, whilst all the other intervening mountains were still wrapped in their blankets of mist and night.
