small shrine placed in front of the screen. Rice was piled into a bowl, and, while the other monks were laughing and chattering among themselves in the temple itself during the progress of the sacrifice, the two women approached the shrine and made obeisance three times, then touching each dish with their fingers, bowed again and retired to their corner. At the same time three priests, breaking from the group that were talking by the doors of the building, sat down in the centre of the temple upon their praying-mats, seven or eight feet from the shrine. While one chanted Korean prayers from a roll of paper, another struck and rang the brass bell repeatedly, and the third hammered the gong. Throughout this part of the service the others chatted volubly, until they, too, joined in a chorus and pæan of thanksgiving, breaking off from that to chant, in low, suppressed tones, a not unimpressive litany.
Repetitions of the services I have described continued all night. Sometimes there was more noise, sometimes less, occasionally there was none, the tired, quavering voices of the sleepy priests tremulously chanting the requisite number of litanies. The women, who sat with wide-opened eyes, watched with interest and were satisfied. The priests seemed bored. Personally I was tired, dazed and stunned by the uproar. During the progress of this strange service, I was struck by the utter absence of that devotional fervour which was so characteristic of the priests in the principal monasteries of the Diamond Mountains.
The ceremony presently shifted from the Temple of the Great Heroes to the spacious courtyard in front of it. Here, when numerous fires had been lighted, the Abbot and three priests, together with the two Korean women, moved in procession. Their march was accompanied by
