I have only space within the limits assigned to this chapter to give a description of heaven, copied from a Buddhistic work, before I leave the subject to continue the incidents of the cruise.
"The land of Heaven—Buddha's—is perfect gold. Its gardens and palaces are adorned with gems. They are encircled with rows of trees, and borders of net-work. There are lovely birds, of sparkling plumage and exquisite notes. The great god O-lo-han; the goddess of Mercy; the unnumbered Buddhas; the host of demigods, and the sages of heaven and earth, will all be assembled on that sacred spot. But in that sacred kingdom there are no women; (!) for the women who will live in that country are first changed into men. The inhabitants are produced from the Lotus flower, and have pure and fragrant bodies, fair and well-formed countenances, with hearts full of wisdom, and free from vexation. They are without pain or sickness, and never become old. This is the Paradise of the West; and the way to obtain it the most simple imaginable, depending on one sentence, O-me-to-fuh. Amida Buddha!"
Footnotes:
[1] One of the causes which have led the Chinese themselves into great errors with regard to the ancient state of their country, is the having given to their ancient characters the acceptations which they did not acquire until later times.
The characters which are now translated by the words emperor, province, city, palace, meant no more in former times than the chief of a tribe, a district, a camp, a house. These simple meanings did not flatter their vanity sufficiently, and they therefore preferred employing terms which would represent their ancestors as rich and powerful, and their empire vast and flourishing in the first year of its foundation as if by magic.—M. de Guignes' Littera.
[2] This presumption was overruled by an all-wise Providence, by the subsequent discovery of some books of Confucius in repairing an old house.—Montgomery Martin.
[3] Anno Domini 297.
[4] Anno Domini 924.
[5] The Chinese made paper about 350 years before Christ; and Confucius, about a century before, wrote his admirable maxims on a bamboo, with a stylus.
[6] The mother of Che-Hwang-te had been a concubine of a merchant of Ho-nan.