Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/565

One would suppose Buddhist ambition to be satisfied with an undertaking of this magnitude, but we are told by a Russian traveler that it is a mere infant beside one a few days’ journey distant. There he found a mountain—a small one, of course—fashioned by the hand of man into the form of Buddha.

Yet it does not appear from Hart’s narrative that he made any attempt to visit and describe so remarkable a wonder.

In 1892, Archibald Little, English merchant, explorer and author, driven out of Chungking by the cholera epidemic, arrived at Jah-ding on his way to Mt. Omei, where he spent several weeks, afterwards embodying his experiences in a book, “Mt. Omei and Beyond.” He made no attempt to locate the Russian traveler’s find, although his wife secured an excellent photograph of the image on the river bank.

In 1906, R. F. Johnston, while collecting material for his work, “From Peking to Mandalay,” arrived at Jah-ding, ascended Mt. Omei, and described its temples and antiquities in the most thorough guidebook style. Yet he seems never to have thought of seeking out the Russian traveler’s great Buddha.

Early in 1908, the Count d’Ollone traveled in the same region. His experiences have appeared in a recent volume, “In Forbidden China,” so called because most of his time was spent among the savage and independent Lolos. On page 188 of that volume, he says:

Kiating possesses one of the most astonishing, though not the most admirable, works of art ever produced by human hands. In a cliff overhanging the confluence of the Yah, the Ta-Tu-Ho and the Min, there is a Buddha, cut out of the solid rock, no less than one hundred and eighty feet in height. It is by far the largest statue in the world. It occupies a recess some sixty feet in width and depth. The god is represented sitting in European fashion. It must be confessed, however, that this great statue is no longer effective. Under the action of the weather, the contours are worn and crumbling; great blocks have fallen away, and the vegetation—mosses, bushes and even trees—has attacked and is disfiguring what remains. Without being able to see how Colborne Baber failed to discover, except in the face, any trace of the sculptor’s hand, we must admit no traces of actual art are now visible. It looks as though the hewers of stone had roughed out of the rock a rudimentary statue, like a snow man, which the artist never completed.

On the next page he goes on to describe the search for rock sculptures which his party conducted in the grottoes surrounding the city, where they had the good fortune to discover a group some miles to the north. On page 193 we find the statement:

Our unexpected discovery, that of rock sculpture of great antiquity and pertaining to a vanished art, filled us with delight, for it revealed a past which was practically unknown. The reader may imagine that we were always on the alert for anything that might put us on the track of fresh discoveries, but I must own that the results were constantly negative.

He then tells how his party was put on several false trails, but finally learned (p. 196) that there was a

very fine Buddha at Yong-hien, some fifty miles to the southeast, Yong-hien was too far from our route, and we had no intention of going in search of its Colossus. No doubt, had we gone, we should have been directed to another.