them, and found that he was, by putting his arms in the position of drawing
the bow, and by pointing to the sword and striking his arm forward;
but he implied that that weapon belonged to the mandarins only. A
great many pieces of paper were suspended on each side of the picture,
some of them marked with Chinese characters, and were, no doubt, invocations
to the deities for some temporary benefits, as all the sects are
in the habit of writing inscriptions of this kind, and depositing them in
the jos houses, or placing them upon stones, of which there are several
in Loo Choo under the name of Karoo. Under a veranda which surrounded
the temple there were several wooden forms strewed with
floivers, and upon the middle form a stool was suspended by thongs in
a handsome japanned stand.
A building in front of this jos house, mentioned by Captain Hall,
has been rebuilt,' but w-as not quite finished at the time of our visit:
though so near to the temple the panels were scrawled over with groups
of figures, some of which were very inappropriate to such a situation.
After we had partaken of tea in the dwelling-house, we determined
npon a walk in the interior, much to the discomfiture of the old
gentleman, who used every means he could think of to induce us to
desist, and produced pipes, sweet cakes, tcha, and masa chorassa, preserves
with which they tempted us whenever they feared our walk would
be directed inland. Finding he could not detain us, he determined to
be our companion, and endeavoured to confine us to the beach by
praising the freshness of the breeze, saying how hot we should find it
inland, and what bad paths there were in that direction, every word of
which proved to be false, as we found the roads very good, and by gaining
elevated situations we enjoyed more of the breeze.
We passed some tombs excavated in the cliffs, and in one that was
broken down we discovered a corpse lying upon its back half decayed
and covered over with a mat; a jar of tea and some cups were placed by
it, that the spirit might drink ; but there was nothing to eat, and our
guide informed us that it was customary to place tea only by the side
of the bodies, and that food was never left there. He turned us away
from this shocking spectacle as much disgusted as ourselves, and seemed
sorry that we had hit upon it. This discovery seems to strengthen
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