Adventure, sport and travel on the Tibetan steppes . through pine groves intermingled with nanmu trees, someof which had grown to the size of two and a-half feet indiameter, and quite 150 feet in height. This nanmu is awood much in demand for furniture, and compares favourablywith walnut in appearance when polished, but is much softer. Most of the buildings on Omei are temples, in which livesome 2,000 monks. So far they had only climbed a spur on the mountain, andhad to descend into a valley again before making the steepclimb that leads to the summit. The most remarkable piece of work they fou
Adventure, sport and travel on the Tibetan steppes . through pine groves intermingled with nanmu trees, someof which had grown to the size of two and a-half feet indiameter, and quite 150 feet in height. This nanmu is awood much in demand for furniture, and compares favourablywith walnut in appearance when polished, but is much softer. Most of the buildings on Omei are temples, in which livesome 2,000 monks. So far they had only climbed a spur on the mountain, andhad to descend into a valley again before making the steepclimb that leads to the summit. The most remarkable piece of work they found on themountain was a huge brazen elephant in a shrine at Wan-nienssu (Myriad Years Monastery). 264 The Caves of West Chhr. Mr. Meares writes of it thus :— Here we found an interest-ing building. The style looked Indian. The lower part wasa cube thirty feet square, which graduated into a circulardome, all beautifully made in brickwork. Inside the temple was a massive wooden cage, and in thecage a great bronze elephant of Indian workmanship. The. HE HONG CHIAO PASS. elephant had three tusks and bore on its back a figure ofBuddha in a lotus blossom, and is supposed to be placedon the spot to which Buddha came when riding on his whiteelephant. Mr. Baber wrote thus of this same piece of workmanship :— Just below it, in a kind of hostel, is a statue of Buddha sport and Travel on the Tibetan Steppes. twenty-five or more feet high, of a very rude and archaic style,reputed to be the oldest idol on the mountain. It is said tobe bronze, but I took it for pure copper. Nothing could belearned of its age. A more artistic work is found in a templebehind Wannienssu, in a separate shrine. Passing undera dark archway we enter a hall, in the middle of which, assoon as we could see through the dim religious light, we ob-served a kind of palisade, and inside it an elephant cast inmagnificent bronze or some such composition, nearly aswhite as silver. The surface is, of course, black with agea
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookpublishernewyorkscribner
