"It was a regular charity lunch; for directly it was over the high-priest entered into further details,--how the rooms we were lodging in wanted repairing, and how everything did (which is quite true), and how we could see every one who came to worship was very poor, and the last Europeans who lodged there gave about £15, and he thought it would be so nice if we gave £25. And he brought the subscription list out, and the brush to write with; and positively would _not_ let our Boy write down £2 10_s._--twice as large a sum as I thought necessary. Then another priest begged too. They begged and begged, till I said at last, determined to interrupt them, 'There is a Tibetan image in the temple behind I do so want you to come and show me.' Then every one burst out laughing at such a very palpable attempt to change the conversation. However, our modest sum got written down, and the chief priest nearly wept. He came to show us the Tibetan image, and he seemed to find it absolutely uninteresting. It holds a little white rabbit in one hand, and a rosary with very large beads in the other, and looks as conceited as it is possible to look. But as he said it was made on the mountain and not in Tibet, we did not photograph it and him together.
"As far as we can make out, this mountain was sacred long before Buddhism; and every day crowds of pilgrims come--numbers of Chinese women, with their bandaged feet wrapped up in husks of Indian corn to make it easier to walk up the steep flights of steps that lead up ten thousand feet to the top of the mountain. How they manage it, I cannot think. The saying is, 'If you are a bad man with sins unrepented, and go up the mountain, you die.' Six men are said to have thus died this year. There is a wonderful bronze Puhsien riding on a colossal bronze elephant, beautifully made, each of its feet standing on a lotus flower. This is in a temple just behind ours, with a dome, and made of bricks, both very unusual in China, and said here never to have been built, but to have come in a single night.
"But I cannot tell you how I wish to get away from all these temples. They begin to oppress me so,--all the people prostrating themselves, and then offering incense before each image in turn (and there are so many!), and lighting a candle before each. They arrive with great baskets full. And they come out of the temple with a rapt expression. And then our white long-haired terrier springs out on them, and they start so! We do not know what to do; because they call him a lion-dog (he is the Chinese idea of a lion), and seem to regard him as a semi-sacred thing. I do not want him to go into the temples at all. And the thresholds are so high he cannot get over; but there is always some one who will hand him over, and then the conceited dog shakes his sides and frisks about among the worshippers. This worship has been going on for thousands of years; and yet I do not believe any one has an idea about Puhsien!