so that we beheld it glowing with the brightest flame. [They say that a flame bursts constantly, like a lightning, from the Summit of the mountain.—­(Ibn Khordadhbeh, p. 44.)—­H.C.] In the way down from this mountain there is a fine level spot, still at a great height, and there you find in order:  first, the mark of Adam’s foot; secondly, a certain statue of a sitting figure, with the left hand resting on the knee, and the right hand raised and extended towards the west; lastly, there is the house (of Adam), which he made with his own hands.  It is of an oblong quadrangular shape like a sepulchre, with a door in the middle, and is formed of great tabular slabs of marble, not cemented, but merely laid one upon another. (Cathay, 358.) A Chinese account, translated in Amyot’s Memoires, says that at the foot of the mountain is a Monastery of Bonzes, in which is seen the veritable body of Fo, in the attitude of a man lying on his side” (XIV. 25). [Ma-Huan says (p. 212):  “Buddhist temples abound there.  In one of them there is to be seen a full length recumbent figure of Shakyamuni, still in a very good state of preservation.  The dais on which the figure reposes is inlaid with all kinds of precious stones.  It is made of sandalwood and is very handsome.  The temple contains a Buddha’s tooth and other relics.  This must certainly be the place where Shakyamuni entered Nirvana.”—­H.C.] Osorio, also, in his history of Emanuel of Portugal, says:  “Not far from it (the Peak) people go to see a small temple in which are two sepulchres, which are the objects of an extraordinary degree of superstitious devotion.  For they believe that in these were buried the bodies of the first man and his wife” (f. 120 v.).  A German traveller (Daniel Parthey, Nurnberg, 1698) also speaks of the tomb of Adam and his sons on the mountain. (See Fabricius, Cod.  Pseudep.  Vet.  Test. II. 31; also Ouseley’s Travels, I. 59.)

It is a perplexing circumstance that there is a double set of indications about the footmark.  The Ceylon traditions, quoted above from Hardy, call its length 3 inches less than a carpenter’s cubit.  Modern observers estimate it at 5 feet or 5-1/2 feet.  Hardy accounts for this by supposing that the original footmark was destroyed in the end of the sixteenth century.  But Ibn Batuta, in the 14th, states it at 11 spans, or more than the modern report. [Ibn Khordadhbeh at 70 cubits.—­H.C.] Marignolli, on the other hand, says that he measured it and found it to be 2-1/2 palms, or about half a Prague ell, which corresponds in a general way with Hardy’s tradition.  Valentyn calls it 1-1/2 ell in length; Knox says 2 feet; Herman Bree (De Bry ?), quoted by Fabricius, 8-1/2 spans; a Chinese account, quoted below, 8 feet.  These discrepancies remind one of the ancient Buddhist belief regarding such footmarks, that they seemed greater or smaller in proportion to the faith of the visitor! (See Koeppen, I. 529, and Beal’s Fah-hian, p. 27.)