[Illustration: IN THE THIRD GATE OF THE TEMPLE OF IYÉMITS[)U], LOOKING TOWARD THE FOURTH.]
The faces of the priests who were there were known to us, the elder's anxious and earnest, the younger's recalling an Italian monsignore. One of them was reading by the uplifted grating and rose to greet us, and to help to explain. We entered the narrow passage which makes the center, through whose returning walls project, in a curious refinement of invention, the golden eaves of the inner building beyond. Gratings which were carved and gilded trellises of exquisite design gave a cool, uncertain light. We passed out of a trellised door on to the black lacquered floor of a veranda, and then sat awhile in a simple room with our hosts to look at temple manuscripts and treasures, and at the open palanquin which once brought here the dead Iyémits[)u]--not reduced to ashes, as his grandfather Iyéyas[)u], but wrapped and covered up in innumerable layers of costly and preserving vermilion. We passed into the corridor behind the building and looked at the picture hanging on the wall, which faces the mountain and the tomb, in which Kuwan-on the Compassionate sits in contemplation beside the descending stream of life. Then for a few moments we entered by a low door the sanctuary, narrow and high and with pyramidal roof.
By the flickering torch which alone gave light, all seemed of gold--the wall, the columns which run up to the central golden roof, and the transoms which connect them. In the darker shade stood a golden shrine, never opened. Whatever precious details there may be were bathed in a shade made of reflected gold. An exquisite feeling of gentle solemnity filled the place. We passed out suddenly into the glare of day and under the blazing blue sky, which hung over the inclosure of tall trees and the temple like the ceiling of a tent.
Again a great wall, spotted with moss and lichens, is built around as an inclosure. It makes a base for the greater wall of the mountain rising above it, which is covered with forest trees, as if the skirting of the wilderness of northern Japan were here suddenly limited. Across one single opening, on the one side, where show the seams of the immense cyclopean construction, and joining two corners, broken by great patches of the shadows of the gigantic trees, stretches a white wall, heavily roofed, against a shadow almost black. In its center is a strange, white gate-building, moundlike in shape, absolutely plain, but capped by a great roof, which is stretched out upon a mass of brackets, all of gold and colors, and with carved golden doors, whose central panels are all fretted and chiseled and stamped with the Wheel of the law. Here begin the distant steps leading through the trees to the tomb where lies the body of Iyémits[)u], cased in layers of vermilion, under golden bronze, like his grandfather Iyéyas[)u], and surrounded by the still more solitary splendor of the forest.