building in Tokyo.
"It's Fuji!"
I had given up hope. We had been there two weeks and Fujiyama was not to be seen. The mists, fogs, and clouds of winter had kept it hidden from our wistful, wondering, waiting eyes.
But there it stood, like a naked man, unashamed; proud of its white form; without a single cloud; burning in the white sunlight. Its huge shoulders were thrown back as with suppressed strength. Its white chest, a Walt Whitman hairy with age; gray-breasted with snow; bulged out like some mighty wrestler, challenging the world. No wonder they worship it!
I had gloried in Fujiyama from many a varied viewpoint. I had caught this great shrine of Japanese devotion in many of its numberless moods. I had seen it outlined against a clear-cut morning sunlight, bathed in the glory of a broadside of light fired from the open muzzle of the sun. I had seen it shrouded in white clouds; and also with black clouds breeding a storm, at even-time. I had seen it with a crown of white upon its brow, and I had seen it with a necklace of white cloud pearls about its neck.
Once I saw this great mountain looking like some ominous volcano through a misty gray winter evening. And one mid-afternoon I saw it almost circled by a misty rainbow, a sight never to be forgotten on earth or in heaven by one whose soul considers a banquet of beauty more worth shouting over than an invitation to feast with a King.
But the last sight I caught of Fuji was the last night that I was in Tokyo, as I rode up from the Ginza on New Year's eve out toward Aoyama Gakuin, straight into a sunset, unsung, unseen by mortal eye.
Before me loomed the great mountain like a monstrous mass of mighty ebony carved by some delicate and yet gigantic artist's hand.
I soon discovered where the artist got the ebony from which to carve this pointed mountain of ebony with its flat top; for far above this black silhouetted mountain was a mass of ebony clouds that seemed to spread from the western horizon clear to the rim of the eastern horizon and beyond into the unseen Sea of Japan in the back yard of the island. It was from this mass of coal-black midnight-black clouds that the giant artist carved his ebony Fuji that night.
But not all was black. Perhaps the giant forged that mountain rather than carved it, for there was a blazing furnace behind Fuji. And this furnace was belching fire. It was not crimson. It was not gold. It was not red. It was fire.
It was furnace fire. It was a Pittsburgh blast-furnace ten thousand times as big as all of Pittsburgh itself, belching fire and flames of sparks. These sparks were flung against the evening skies. Some folks, I fancy, on that memorable night called them stars; but I know better. They were giant sparks flung from that blast-furnace which was booming and roaring behind Fuji. I could not hear it roar; that is true; but I could feel it roar. I could not hear it because even so great a sound as that furnace must have been making will not travel sixty miles, even though it was as still up there in the old theological tower as a country cemetery by winter down in Rhode Island when the snow covers the graves.
Then suddenly a flare of fire shot up directly behind the cone of Fuji, flaming into the coal-bank of clouds above the mountain, as if the old shaggy seer had forgotten his age and was dreaming of youth again when the earth was young and he was a volcano.
Above that streak of fire and mingled with it, black smoke seemed to pour until it formed a flat cloud of black smoke directly above the cone, and spread out like a fan across the sky to give the giant artist further ebony to shape his mountain monument.
Then Fuji suddenly belched its volcano of color and lava; of rose and gold, amber, salmon, primrose, sapphire, marigold; and in a stream these poured over Fuji's sides and down along the ridge-line of the lesser hills until they too were covered with a layer of molten glory a mile thick.
The clouds above Fuji forgot to be black. In fact, their mood of sullenness departed as by magic, and a smile swept over their massive mood of moroseness, and glory swept the skies. It was as if that furnace behind Fuji had suddenly burst, throwing its molten fire over the hills, the mountains, the sky, the world.
And "mine eyes" had "seen the glory of the coming of the Lord." And that was enough for any man for one lifetime.
* * * * * *
Then there is beautiful Boroboedoer down in Java. It is a Physical Flash-Light that looms with its huge and mysterious historical architectural beauty like some remnant of the age when the gods of Greece roamed the earth. A sunrise from its pinnacled height I have already described, but the temple itself is unforgettable. There is nothing like it on the earth.
Boroboedoer is one of the wonders of the world, although little known. It is in the general shape of the pyramid of Egypt, but more beautiful. One writer says, "Boroboedoer represents more human labor and artistic skill than the great pyramids." Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace says: "The human labor and skill expended on Boroboedoer is so great that the labor expended on the great pyramid sinks into significance beside it."
Boroboedoer was built in the seventh century A.D., by the Javanese under Hindu culture. Then came the Mohammedan invasion, destroying all such works of art in its pathway.
It is said that the priests so loved this beautiful Buddha temple that they covered it over with earth and then planted trees and tropical vegetation on it. In six months it was so overgrown that it looked like a hill. This is one explanation of why it lay for a thousand years unknown.
The volcanic ashes undoubtedly helped in this secretion, for old Merapi even now belches its ashes, rocks and dust out over the beautiful valley down upon which Merapi looks.
From Djodjakarta you go to the temples.
This great temple has, instead of the plain surfaces of the great pyramid, one mile of beautifully carved decorations, with 2141 separate panels depicting the life of Buddha from the time he descended from the skies until he arrived at Nirvana, or perfect isolation from the world. A history of more than a thousand years is told in its stone tablets by the sculptor's chisel, told beautifully, told enduringly, told magnificently.
One writer says: "This temple is the work of a master-builder whose illuminated brain conceived the idea of this temple wherein he writes in sculpture the history of a religion."
And again one says architecturally speaking of it:
"It is a polygonous pyramid of dark trachyte, with gray cupulas on jutting walls and projecting cornices, a forest of pinnacles."
There are four ledges to this hill temple and above each ledge or stone path are rows of Buddhas hidden in great 5-foot stone bells, and at the top crowning the temple a great 50-foot bell in which Buddha is completely hidden from the world, symbol of the desired Nirvana that all Buddhists seek.
Mysterious with weird echoes of a past age it stands, silhouetted against a flaming sky to-night as I see it for the first time. It is late evening and all day long we have been climbing the ancient ruins of that magnificent age of Hindu culture on the island of Java. This temple of Boroboedoer was to be the climax of the day, and surely it is all of that.
The fire dies out of the sky. The seven terraces of the stone temple begin to blur into one great and beautiful pyramid. Only the innumerable stone bells stand out against the starlit night; stone bells with the little peepholes in them, through which the stolid countenances and the stone eyes of many Buddhas, in calm repose, look out upon the four points of the compass.
Night has fallen. We have seen the great Temple by crimson sunset and now we shall see it by night.
The
