in the afternoon we began the ascent of
Tai Shan, the most sacred mountain in China, the most frequented,
perhaps, in the world. There, according to tradition, legendary emperors
worshipped God. Confucius climbed it six centuries before Christ, and
sighed, we are told, to find his native State so small. The great
Chin-Shih-Huang was there in the third century B.C. Chien Lung in the
eighteenth century covered it with inscriptions. And millions of humble
pilgrims for thirty centuries at least have toiled up the steep and
narrow way. Steep it is, for it makes no detours, but follows straight
up the bed of a stream, and the greater part of the five thousand feet
is ascended by stone steps. A great ladder of eighteen flights climbs
the last ravine, and to see it from below, sinuously mounting the
precipitous face to the great arch that leads on to the summit, is
enough to daunt the most ardent walker. We at least were glad to be
chaired some part of the way. A wonderful way! On the lower slopes it
passes from portal to portal, from temple to temple. Meadows shaded with
aspen and willow border the stream as it falls from green pool to green
pool. Higher up are scattered pines Else the rocks are bare--bare, but
very beautiful, with that significance of form which I have found
everywhere in the mountains in China.

To such beauty the Chinese are peculiarly sensitive. All the way up the
rocks are carved with inscriptions recording the charm and the sanctity
of the place. Some of them were written by emperors; many, especially,
by Chien Lung, the great patron of art in the eighteenth century. They
are models, one is told, of caligraphy as well as of literary
composition. Indeed, according to Chinese standards, they could not be
the one without the other. The very names of favourite spots are poems
in themselves. One is "the pavilion of the phoenixes"; another "the
fountain of the white cranes." A rock is called "the tower of the
quickening spirit"; the gate on the summit is "the portal of the
clouds." More prosaic, but not less charming, is an inscription on a
rock in the plain, "the place of the three smiles," because there some
mandarins, meeting to drink and converse, told three peculiarly funny
stories. Is not that delightful? It seems so to me. And so peculiarly
Chinese!

It was dark before we reached the summit. We put up in the temple that
crowns it, dedicated to Yue Huang, the "Jade Emperor" of the Taoists; and
his imag