All the temples on the mountain's top were burnt down a few years ago. But the exquisite Bronze Temple, on the edge of the precipice, to which every province in the empire contributed, has never been rebuilt after its sad destruction, beautiful fragments alone remaining; and the rough pine-wood temples round it appeared all at daggers drawn. Our Golden Temple was bringing an action against another for placing a golden pinnacle as the centre ornament of its roof, thus building up a pretext to filch from it its immemorial golden title; whilst another temple accused ours of having intentionally lit the fire that consumed it. We did not believe this of our temple, for even its boy priests were hard-working, good little boys, who knelt and burnt incense with reverence too; whilst the young priests of the adjoining temples were bold, bad youths, of ribald laughter, importunate curiosity, and great effrontery. There was, however, one temple where the priests appeared always wrapped in devotion, whenever I looked in. They had not yet begun rebuilding, perhaps were still praying for funds, as they knelt among their burnt and charred images.
There were outlying temples on distant points of vantage, each inhabited by a solitary priest. One had long attracted us by its exquisite neatness, and the propriety and cleanliness of its arrangements. Its occupant was away on a pilgrimage, but he returned before we left the mountain, and we were not surprised to find him a young man of great gravity and much courtesy. We had already studied his kitchen, with its kettle hanging from the rafters by a chain and a jointed stick; also observed his closet-bed, which, in accordance with the stricter rule, was but a wooden seat, so that neither day nor night could he lie down. We now saw how carefully washed were the feet in his straw sandals; also what superior straw sandals he had brought up to sell to pilgrims who had worn out theirs; and how particular he was to make no profit upon the transaction, when we bought a pair, and inadvertently slightly overpaid for them. But our acquaintance was not long or intimate enough to arrive at anything of the spiritual life beneath that exterior propriety. He it was who told us there was a way down the back of the mountain into the Wilderness, where the wild cattle roam, and that, though bad, he could not say other than that it was possible, seeing he had just passed along it--this though he could see our coolies' imploring gestures, and hear their rather audibly muttered curses. They had every one of them sworn there was no path. But there was, and the young hermit could not say otherwise. We often thought of him, as we all fell headlong going down that path, that certainly did exist, and enabled us to proceed to our next sacred mountain without descending into the burning, cholera-stricken country.