re heard on the
sand of the paths, but otherwise there is complete silence and quiet.
The feeling reminds one of that which is experienced at the Taj Mahal.

All Japan is like a museum. You can travel about for years and daily
find new gems of natural beauty and of the most perfect art. Everything
seems so small and delicate. Even the people are small. The roads are
narrow, and are chiefly used by rickshas and foot passengers. The houses
are dolls' closets. The railways are of narrow gauge, and the carriages
like our tramcars. But if you wish to see something large you can visit
the Buddhist temple in Kioto. There we are received with boundless
hospitality by the high priest, Count Otani, who leads us round and
shows us the huge halls where Buddha sits dreaming, and his own palace,
which is one of the most richly and expensively adorned in all Japan.

If you wish to see something else which does not exactly belong to the
small things of Japan you should visit a temple in Osaka, the chief
manufacturing town of Japan. There hangs a bell which is 25 feet high
and weighs 220 tons. In a frame beside the bell is suspended a beam, a
regular battering-ram, which is set in motion up and down when the bell
is sounded. And when the bell emits its heavy, deafening ring it sounds
like thunder.

Kioto is much handsomer than Tokio, for it has been less affected by the
influence of Western lands, and lies amidst hills and gardens. Kioto is
the genuine old Japan with attractive bazaars and bright streets. Shall
we look into a couple of shops?

Here is an art-dealer's. We enter from the street straight into a large
room full of interesting things, but the dealer takes us into quite a
small room, where he invites us to sit at a table. And now he brings out
one costly article after another. First he shows us some gold lacquered
boxes, on which are depicted trees and houses and the sun in gold, and
golden boats sailing over water. One tiny box, containing several
compartments and drawers, and covered all over with the finest gold
inlaying, costs only three thousand _yen_, or about three hundred
pounds. Then he shows us an old man in ivory lying on a carpet of ivory
and reading a book, while a small boy in ivory has climbed on to his
back. From a whole elephant tusk a number of small elephants have been
carved, becoming smaller towards the point of the tusk, but all cut out
in the same piece. You are tired of looking at them, they are so