Presently we came to a little broken-down rude kind of chapel in the midst of the wood.  It was built of stone; and masses of stone, shapeless and moss-grown, were lying scattered about on the ground around it.  At a little rough-hewn altar within it stood a Christian priest, blessing the elements.  Overhead, the great dark sprays of the larches and cone-laden firs swept its roof.  I sat down to rest on one of the stones, and looked upwards a while at the foliage.  Then turning my gaze again towards the earth, I saw a vast circle of stones, moss-grown like that on which I sat, and ranged in a circle such as that of Stonehenge.  It occupied an open space in the midst of the forest; and the grasses and climbing plants of the place had fastened on the crevices of the stones.

One stone, larger and taller than the rest, stood at the junction of the circle, in a place of honor, as though it had stood for a symbol of divinity.  I looked at my guide, and said, " Here, at least, is an idol whose semblance belongs to another type than that of the Hindus.”  He smiled, and turning from me to the Christian priest at the altar, said aloud, “Priest, why do your people receive from sacerdotal hands the bread only, while you yourselves receive both bread and wine?” And the priest answered, “We receive no more than they.  Yes, though under another form, the people are partakers with us of the sacred wine with its particle.  The blood is the life of the flesh, and of it the flesh is formed, and without it the flesh could not consist.  The communion is the same.”

Then the young man my guide turned again to me and waved his hand towards the stone before me.  And as I looked the stone opened from its summit to its base; and I saw that the strata within had the form of a tree, and that every minute crystal of which it was formed, —­particles so fine that grains of sand would have been coarse in comparison with, them,—­and every atom composing its mass, were stamped with this same tree-image, and bore the shape of the ice-crystals, of the ferns and of the colossal palm-leaves I had seen.  And my guide said, “Before these stones were, the Tree of Life stood in the midst of the Universe.”

And again we passed on, leaving behind us the chapel and the circle of stones, the pines and the firs:  and as we went the foliage around us grew more and more stunted and like that at home.  We traveled quickly; but now and then, through breaks and openings in the woods, I saw solitary oaks standing in the midst of green spaces, and beneath them kings giving judgment to their peoples, and magistrates administering laws.