It is this sort of thing that has convinced the Chinese of our stupidity.

mortality. A lane skirted by trees of almost jungle girth leads on to another We got to the foot of Lo Fau San by flight of steps, white with the fallen sunset. Fa Shau Thoi, the Buddhist blossoms of the "nine-mile-fragrant Monastery of the Fair Head, is some tree," which fills the air with a soft, six hundred feet up the mountain-side, heavy scent as of myrtle. At the top with a good bridle-path leading up from is a courtyard as big as a tennis-lawn, this point. It was quite dark when we with a balustrade around, overhung by arrived, and the heavy folding-doors the upper branches of peach and were already bolted and barred for the pomelo and willow; and on the opponight. We were shown into the guests' site side the monastery runs to left and quarters, and assigned a bedroom and right in long, low wings of red brick, a sitting-room. The monks are used to broken in the middle by a verandah visitors, and foreigners are not un- and portico, rich with texts in red and known; but after a long and hungry gold, and highly colored pictures of old day, any one, Chinese or European, men playing chess, after the wellmight do worse than sit down at their known Chinese style. But for this table-d'hôte, before a dish of snow- porch and the blazing golden sun on white rice piled high and a baked the roof-beam where it sags in the chicken, flanked by bowls of gravy, middle, an Elizabethan country-house vermicelli, and boiled cabbage. Nor will he do amiss to guard himself from chill by a jar of hot sweet rice-wine. After dinner, I was glad to turn into my clean straw bed and sleep the sleep of the just.

would give no bad idea of Fair Head Monastery. Immediately behind, the cliff of discolored granite runs up so steeply that the neck aches as you peer up at the blue sky above. Fir-trees cling closely to it, their roots twisted sideways into the rock. A brook slips broadly over the black face, and breaks in a patch of undergrowth half-way down, with a monotonous droning. A half-transparent mist-cloud

Puts forth an arm and creeps from pine to pine,

And loiters slowly down;

Fa Shau Thoi is really a charming place, quite apart from its being raised high above the reeking stew of the Canton plain. It is enshadowed by an atmosphere of peace that removes it far away from the profane tramp and turmoil of swarming China. If the god Buddha could rouse him from the sleep of his blissful Nirvana, to hallow any spot amid the million-tongued struggle and squalor of the land, surely he would choose the gulley of the Fair Head. What a contrast between its shade, the coolness of heavy timber, the rivulet dripping down between the rounded granite boulders, and the rice-other. This vestibule opens by two field sweltering in the heat below, doors on to cloisters which run round a where the soil is half mud, half ma- courtyard and rise by steps with the nure, and the water a thrice-defiled off scouring of both!

and you wake to hear yourself saying, "It's just like a Chinese picture." Through the round granite pillars of the porch you pass into an empty, barnlike room, with a drum as big as a wine-vat in one corner, and a monstrous bell engraved with sutras in an

slope of the hill to the side opposite. Crossing the courtyard, you mount to The path crosses a little waterfall, the carved and fretted folding-doors of and leads by a flight of rough steps up the chief shrine. If you go in, which to the squat brick archway that bounds you are quite at liberty to do, you will the precincts of the monastery. Just see that it is a plain, whitewashed inside is a little plaster image of room, supported on wooden pillars Buddha on a pedestal, looking, it must running up to the tiled roof. In the be confessed, more like Father Christmas on a cracker than a saint who fasted and suffered and fought off his

centre, and facing the doorway, is an altar on which are block-tin candelabra and vases filled with artificial flowers;

a little wooden drum, shaped like a each by his praying-mat, facing each whispering-shell; and a brazen bowl in other in rows on this side and that of which half-a-dozen joss-sticks smoulder Buddha's throne. The candle-light day and night, planted in the tightly from the altar catches the carving and packed ashes of their predecessors. the lacquer - work, and the cleanBehind this altar, and reaching half-shaven heads of the brethren. A monk way to the roof-beams, there is a huge folds his hands before him, shuts his wooden frame carved and varnished, eyes, and launches forth into a prayer, with a glass front, and inside sits which, being in corrupt Sanscrit, is Buddha Shakyamuni on his throne. not understanded of the general. He The idol is unlike anything in heaven gabbles through it as fast as he can go, above or in the earth beneath least in a high, nasal sing-song which seems of all like to that Buddha whom the strangely familiar; it appears to be a sight of suffering drove from his harem sort of litany, the congregation making and his palace into the forest, to fight the responses in unison. At intervals against his passions and to conquer a gong jars the semi-silence; while after years of suffering and tempta- through all you are aware of a queer, tion. The only thing it does resemble droning throb, and discover at length at all is a Chinaman who has read the that it comes from a novice, who, with classics. The artist has not been able a sublime air of abstraction and the to avoid giving the patronizing droop slightest perceptible movement of his of the eyes and the smooth, unthink- hand, is tap-tapping at a tiny wooden ing brow which are his conventions for drum. The blend of subdued sounds, dignity; even the supercilious little lights, colors, gives the indescribable finger is there, cocked up to show its something of sensuous charm that long, dainty nail, which says, "Look steals upon a man in a Catholic place at me, and judge if we ever do any of worship; and I felt a secret symwork." Yes, this overdressed, imper-pathy with Ah Man at my side - Ah tinent Celestial is the weather-beaten Man, the declared agnostic — when he etherealized Messiah ! whispered, "Perhaps true indeed! I perceive that these men fervently believe."

There are half-a-dozen lesser shrines within the precinct, all much the same to look at, connected by cloisters and courtyards. The Heavenly Wells, as these courtyards are called, are filled with lotus-lilies, white and red, and flowering shrubs, and little tanks of goldfish. Now and then one of the dingy, sodden monks will saunter out to renew the incense-sticks, or to pick a flower and lay it upon the altar; but during the daytime they keep very quiet with their opium-pipes in their cells, and are not much in evidence; and a perfect calm rests over the Fair Head.

Suddenly all face round to the doorway, their backs to the altar. The fat old abbot kneels and prostrates himself thrice, striking his head on the stone floor. Then they form in procession and march round the shrine, chanting the key-note of their religion as it has reached them from the mouths of the Indian missionaries to China more than two thousand years ago: "Nan-Vu O-Ni-To Fut!" Holy Buddha Infinite! More prayers, more kowtows; and so the day's work ends; except there are two, for whom it is a duty But when the drum beats for even- (whether of fatigue or supererogation, ing prayer all is changed. Thirty I know not) to beat the big drum for monks appear from nowhere in partic-some hours, and to strike the carved ular, cach in a cassock of dove-colored bell with a suspended battering-ram six hemp, with a surplice of russet or yellow fastened at the left shoulder with a knot of red. Then if you peep through the carvings of the doorway into the big shrine, you will see them standing

times eighteen times. Then all is over for the night, until, an hour before daylight, you wake to hear the new day ushered in by renewed throb and clang of drum and bell.

It sounds very solemn and imposing, | pretty good, considering John's idea of but it must not be supposed that the time and a promise. But at ten o'clock Buddhist monks know anything about their own doctrine. Any one wishing to inform himself on the subject should turn it up in the "Encyclopædia Britannica; "it will be time wasted to ask a Chinese monk. Indeed, their ignoFance of the religion they profess is astounding. They know, most of them, that "Fut," as they call Buddha, was a foreigner of some sort, but that is about all. They do not understand the very prayers they chant. They burn incense before strange gods - before the Tao-ist God of the Five Compass-over slope after slope of grass-clad hillpoints, for instance. They have absolved themselves from the command against eating animal food, and are content to eat maigre, like the Tao-ists, two days a month; though perhaps they could give a reason for this innovation. Not that their ignorance is remarkable, considering the way they are recruited. One takes the vows "shaves the head," as he would say - because he does not see any other means of ensuring his daily dose of opium. Another because he has got into trouble, and is "wanted" at Can

the other two still were not; so I made a start with those I had, leaving the Late-born to ferret out the perjured beasts of burden and follow after.

It is wisely forbidden by the authorities to cut wood in the valley of the Fair Head; but I was not grateful to my men for taking me by a short cut through the underwood and drenching me to the waist; however, as things turned out, a little moisture more or less did not matter. Then began the real climb, up zigzag tracks of clay, and

ton.

After a year's menial service, should he still give satisfaction, he may aspire to become an Exalted Brother as good as the rest.

side, with stepping-stones here and there in the steepest bits. As the kulis were carrying ninety pounds apiece, it may be imagined that our progress was slow. Over the worst bits they swang deliberately from stone to stone, uttering an exclamatory "Tshaw!"; and the clink of Bass against Pilsener jarred cruelly on the imagination. Happily, not a bottle was broken.

After about an hour we made out three little white specks on a yellow line below us, which seemed to be the rest of the party, and by our combined war-cries attracted their attention. I extemporized a telegraphic apparatus out of my sun-hat on a walking-stick, and was engaged in a desperate attempt

Are they, then, mere vulgar impos-to signal for some one to post on with tors? Perhaps not. They say they the tobacco (for I was in a cigarless believe-something which they have region), when the mist closed down on never taken the trouble to think out- us, and we were alone in a green grey anything that is the "correct thing" island, cut off from life of any sort. It for Buddhists to believe; and I doubt also began to rain, and things did not their making any mental reservations. look cheerful. Even a halt for lunch The fact is, they are past reasoning, as brought little comfort; for as I munched they are past curiosity, past hope and the homely biscuit, the bearers pleaded fear. They are absolutely careless and so earnestly for a share that it went to useless and besotted. If this is the life my heart to refuse them—although, as of the lotus-eater, most people would I pointed out, they had already "eaten prefer to live the life of a naked Sakai full," and my "foreign-tin cakes" on a Malay mountain, with a blow-pipe were "for me, one individual, probhunting squirrels for the evening meal. ably not enough." They then squatted Our next ambition was the very top on their haunches and watched me, of the mountain-namely, Pat Yun gulping pathetically after the manner Tshz, the Buddhist Monastery of the of dogs. But when one of them deOpening Cloud. Of the four bearers manded "Wi-si-ki spirit," I began to who were engaged for 6 A.M. sharp, suspect that they were not so unsophistwo turned up at eight, which was ticated as they looked.

When, after four hours' climbing, we | way round the green earth floor of my had covered some two-thirds of the dis- room, and in drying our clothes and tance, the spirits of the angry mountain bedding in one corner round a charcoal determined to do their worst; and the stove as big as a flower-pot. rain, which up to this point had been For him who shuns his fellow-men "Tit, tit, tat, tat," as a Chinaman ex- the Opening Cloud is the place; there pressively puts it, became "Pi-pa-la, he may rest assured that he is six good pi-li-pa-la," and in a very few minutes miles from any living soul. The monwe were drenched to the skin. How-astery was almost entirely destroyed ever, we bore up manfully, and bearer | during a storm last year, and the sole Number One vexed the solitude with a remaining monk is a “flowing-water mountain ditty, sung, or, as we should smoker"—that is, he never leaves his say, howled, in a drawling falsetto. The first verse goes something like this:

Still is all around us, still and fair to see, None on all your mountain-sides can sing a song like me.

You, you know the mountain-song; sing

a stave or two.

bed and opium-pipe except for meals. He and his man-of-all-work are the only society. It is true that on my arrival there was a third, but he was an interloper. Having chanced to stray up, he had decided that a "Fo Shang's "life would be a happy one, and proposed in due course to shave Come, my little sister, join in harmony! off his pigtail and enter the order. At There are a great many verses, most of first my friend, with the indifference which are not exactly of a drawing- of a confirmed smoker, had raised no room nature, though they appeared to objections; but as time went on, it relieve the singer's feelings immensely. dawned on him that lighting twenty Perhaps they recalled a romantic pas- joss-sticks a day and banging a gong sion of the days gone by, when some were no sort of equivalent for the fair grass-cutter on the hillside forgot man's keep, for he was a gross feeder. the husband who bought her, in rap-Accordingly he loudly urged the imture at the strain, and encouraged his advances by replying: —

Through the dewy moorland round about I stray,

Sleeve rolled back to elbow, cutting grass all day;

propriety of a man, with wife and parents still alive, aspiring to the monkhood. And when the new-comer expressed his willingness to sell the one and renounce the other, the monk, feeling unequal to a forcible expulsion, was reduced to the absurd expedient of scolding the unfortunate man all day for the way he beat the drum ! The excitement was a great strain on the poor child of Buddha, and I was glad when he plucked up courage to settle the business by cutting off supplics.

Weary of my labor; fainting in the heat,Lo! here comes a stranger; very sweet his long lay.

It is a pity that this sort of romance should be the only form possible under Chinese conditions.

When, after a last long scramble, a low wall and a cluster of corrugated- Even at Pat Yun Tshz new faces are iron roofs loomed through the down-seen occasionally. During my stay a pour, we all were glad. The solitary party of rush-cutters called who had monk at the Opening Cloud Monastery never before seen a foreigner. They gave me a hearty welcome, and in- were very respectful, and rather nerstalled me in the only shrine that did vous quite different from the type of not leak. The rest of our party arrived Chinaman who stares at you, laughing not long after, with stirring tales of just as insolently as is safe under the peri incurred in crossing a torrent, circumstances, and who bursts into where a yard-wide streamlet had trick- filthy abuse as soon as your back is led an hour before. The remaining turned. This ruffian, who is seen to as daylight was spent in planking a path-great advantage in civilized Canton as

In course of time he asked me the "Ill-luck and alas! there was one inevitable questions, Had not I come small boy picked up a stone even thus, up to search for treasure? Could not and threw it, thinking by chance to hit I see a fathom into the ground because them. Then in a flash away they flew, my eyes were blue? But when I de-fi, fu the sound of it, towards this flashclared with some irritation that I did ing-basket hill; and to this day no man has seen them more. Hai, tai. So strange an affair! And I saw it with these eyes."