beyond words. Their designers will bring great boulders from almost incredible distances (not, however, from foreign countries, as a rule, for that would not be in line with their artistic notions as to the fitness of things), and will pay large sums for them. So extravagant were the prices paid for beautiful and appropriate stones in the Tempo Period (1830 to 1844), that an Imperial Edict had to be issued to curb the liberality of rock fanciers, and a limit was placed on the sum that might be paid for one stone.
Great ingenuity is sometimes shown in transporting the big boulders which are considered so necessary to any garden in the attempt to portray mountain scenery or that of a rocky river bed. These great blocks are, with the most delicate precision (for the Japanese are wonderful stone masons), split apart into portable pieces, each of which is marked and arranged, so that it may, like a Japanese puzzle, be put together again. On arrival at the scene of its new home, it is stuck together without any break being left to show, with the universal cement of the Far East, chunam—clay mixed with lime.
But to return to the stones, and their quaint but intelligent method and rules for employment, I feel that I cannot do better than quote from Mr. Conder’s illuminating book. For although my Japanese friends, who were always almost
