Chap. XIIT. 



WOO-E-SHAN. 



223 



CHAP TER XIII. 



Woo-e-shan — Ascent of the hill — Arrive at a Buddhist temple — 

 Description of the temple and the scenery — Strange rocks — My 

 reception — Our dinner and its ceremonies — An interesting con- 

 versation — An evening stroll — Formation of the rocks — Soil — 

 Yiew from the top of Woo-e-shan — A priest's grave — A view by 

 moonlight — Chinese wine — Cultivation of the tea-shrub — Chains 

 and monkeys used in gathering it — Tea-merchants — Happiness 

 and contentment of the peasantry. 



As soon as I was fairly out of the suburbs of Tsong- 

 gan-hien I had my first glimpse of the far-famed 

 Woo-e-shan. It stands in the midst of the plain 

 which I have noticed in the previous chapter, and is 

 a collection of little hills, none of which appear to be 

 more than a thousand feet high. They have a sin- 

 gular appearance. Their faces are nearly all perpen- 

 dicular rock. It appears as if they had been thrown 

 up by some great convulsion of nature to a certain 

 height, and as if some other force had then drawn 

 the tops of the whole mass slightly backwards, break- 

 ing it up into a thousand hills. By some agency of 

 this kind it might have assumed the strange forms 

 which were now before me. 



Woo-e-shan is considered by the Chinese to be 

 one of the most wonderful, as well as one of the 

 most sacred, spots in the empire. One of their 

 manuscripts, quoted by Mr. Ball, thus describes it : 



