vast, circular stone terraces, platform placed upon platform, each slightly receding from the one beneath, until the apex of the cone is reached. The central and largest of these remarkable piles, Maurice, when he first caught a glimpse of it, compared to a huge Papal tiara—no inapt comparison, by the way, for it certainly looked more like that than anything else. In spite of the distance we had climbed, there still remained three of the platforms to be passed before the top could be reached.
“George, you don’t know these Buddhist priests,” Maurice said musingly. “Lazy and indifferent as they appear, they are the most inveterate fanatics on earth. If it were a part of their religion to witness the sunrise from the top of this tower on this particular day, they would move heaven and earth to get here—they would crawl up step by step on their knees, if they could gain their end in no other way.”
“I saw enough of them in China, to understand pretty well what they are like,” I replied.
“Indeed you did not. The Chinese Buddhists are different. With them religion has little or no meaning. Like some of our Christians they make it but a fetich; a bald formula of words and ceremonies which they are alike too ignorant and too indifferent to understand.”
“And are these people different?” I asked skeptically.
“Very different. I have made a study of them since I have been in Cambodia. Of course with the masses it is the same the world over. The Chinese are too practical, too worldly to make deep spiritual thinkers, but among the higher classes of Buddhists in Farther India there are minds capable of the deepest metaphysical reflection; minds stored with an accumulation of spiritual knowledge such as you and I are utterly unable to comprehend.”
“Bosh!” I exclaimed, lighting a cheroot. “Why to hear you talk, old fellow, one would think you were a convert to Buddhism. What are these Buddhists but a parcel of ignorant idolators, worshiping gods of wood and stone, which neither see nor hear nor think nor smell, as the Scripture says somewhere. Positively, Maurice, you surprise me—you do indeed.”
He sighed, gazing upon my face with a certain far-away look that I had often observed in his eyes, and had as often set down to a morbid dreaminess of character which he certainly possessed at times. Thrusting his hands into his
