than divinities.  Nature neither respects dogma nor worships the gods made by men, and the moss and the lichens have muffled up the idols and eaten the substance of the sacred stone.  Here Booddha wears a robe of choicest green, and there the little saxafrage waves its white blossoms from the shoulder of Amida, rending asunder her stone body.  Even the little stone columns which contain a guiding hand pointing out the road to Kanozan are dedicated to Great Shaka (Booddha).  Passing one of the larger temples, we meet a company of pilgrims.  Actual sight and reasoning from experience in other lands agree in telling me that they are women, and most of them old women.  They return my salute, politely striving to conceal their wonder at the first to-jin they have ever looked upon.

I would wager that these people, like most of the rustics in Japan, have always believed the foreigners from Europe and America to be certainly ruffians, and most probably beasts.  Many of them, without having heard; of Darwin or Monboddo, believe all the “hairy foreigners” to be descendants of dogs.  Their first meeting with a foreigner sweeps away the cobwebs of prejudice, and they are ashamed of their former ignorance.  In extorting from Japanese friends their first ideas about foreigners, I have been forcibly reminded of some popular ideas concerning the people of China and Japan which are still entertained at home, especially by the queens of the kitchen and the lords of the hod.

After the fashion in Japan, I inquire of the pilgrims whence they came and whither they are going.  Leaning upon their staves and unslinging their huge round, conical hats, they give me to know that they have come on foot from Muja, nearly one hundred and fifty miles distant, and that they will finish their pilgrimage at Kominato—­where the great founder of the Nichiren sect (one of the last developments of Booddhism in Japan) was born—­twenty-seven miles beyond the point at which we met.  I inform them that I have come over seven thousand miles, and will also visit Nichiren’s birthplace. “Sayo de gozarimos!  Naru hodo?” ("Indeed, is it possible?”)

I have reached their hearts through the gates of surprise.  A foreigner visiting Nichiren’s birthplace!  And coming seven thousand miles too!  The old ladies become loquacious.  They pour out their questions by dozens.  Do you have Booddhist temples in America?  Of course the Nichiren sect flourishes there?  When I politely answer No to both questions, a look of disappointed surprise and pity steals over both the ruddy and the wrinkled faces.  “Then he is a heathen!” says the expression on their faces.  How strange that no Booddhist temples exist in the foreigner’s country!  Ah, perhaps, then, the Shintoo religion is the religion of the foreigner’s country?  “No? Naru hodo! Then what do you believe in?”