itors, who have not even spared the lovely island of Enoshima with the armour stone on which is graven the prayer, of rocks and crest of fir-trees, and beyond "Namu Amida Butsu" "Save us, Eternal Buddha."

I could not learn the name of the artist to whom the credit of the great work is due, but he is said to have been the ancestor of one Ono Goroyémon, a man now living in the west of the province of Kadzusa.

that again are the distant mountains above which stands out Fujigama the Peerless, its point just beginning to be capped with snow, from which, during the heat of summer, in spite of its 13,000 feet, it is quite free. From the hill sides three or four streamlets, swollen by the heavy rains, come purling down to the sea, and into one of these Shiraki's little horse, who had probably only been waiting for a convenient opportunity to show his power, quietly landed my unfortunate scribe, who had been giving many signs of suffering under the unwonted exercise he had undergone. The bottom was soft, however, and so was Shiraki, and so there were no bones broken and no damage done.

In the old days there were two other colossal bronze Buddhas in Japan. The one at Nara and the other at Kiyôto; but the latter, which was only erected in the year 1590, having been much damaged by a severe earthquake, was melted down and minted and replaced by a wooden figure in the year 1662. The image which I have been describing was the least of the three, indeed the one at Nara, is said, by a popular fiction, to be so big that a man may crawl up its nostrils; but all men are agreed that the big Buddha near Kamakura is much the most beautiful to see, for the Nara Buddha is inside a temple, so that it cannot be seen in detail, while this one, standing out in the open air, may be looked upon from a distance, which enables the eye to compass it. The first time I came here the genius of the place was a venerable priest nearly, if not quite, a century old, certainly the oldest man to look at that I ever beheld, and all the more re-self a priest of the Zen sect. markable in that it is rare to see persons of very advanced age in this country. Indeed I doubt whether the Japanese are in general a very long-lived race, although for many of their heroes in the dark ages they are fond of claiming the honour of One famous minister there was years. who died in the fourth century, having lived as we are told, no less than 317 years, during 240 of which he was the chief minister of six successive emperors! Like the avenue of trees the old priest has disappeared and both have left a void in the picturesqueness of the place.

One of these little rivers is called the Yukiaigawa, or River of Meeting, from the There is a certain following story: Buddhist sect called the sect of Nichiren, after its founder a priest who came and took up his abode at Kamakura in the middle of the thirteenth century. This Nichiren, not content with preaching his own doctrine, must needs teach that all other sects were damnable heresies, and in so doing he certainly did not show the wisdom of the serpent, for Hôjô Tokiyori who was then ruling the country, was him

Can anything be more lovely in its way than the ride from the great Buddha over the richly wooded hills to the sea? And then it is such a heavenly day, such a pure atmosphere! The sea, most treacherous of all seas, lies calm and blue before us, breaking in lazy ripples upon the dazzling beach, and looking as innocent and peaceful as though it had never engulfed ships and men and cargo, nor sent up a great, cruel tidal wave to sweep whole townships and villages to destruction before it. On the left are the wood-crowned heights and cliffs now bright with the many colours of autumn; to the right, in front of us, is the

At last he

became so troublesome and made so great
a disturbance in the city, that Tokiyori
lost patience and ordered him to be exe-
cuted for a pestilent fellow. So Nichiren
was carried off to the village of Katasé,
opposite Enoshima, to the spot where the
temple Riyukôji now stands, and the exe-
cutioner's leathern carpet having been
spread, he knelt down and stretched out
his neck to receive the fatal blow. The
sword was raised in the air and the heads-
man was poising it before striking, when
suddenly the blade, by a miracle, was
snapped in two, and the presiding officer,
amazed by the portent, stopped the execu-
tion until he should have taken Tokiyori's
pleasure in the matter, for he felt that of a
surety this was no common accident, So
he sent off a messenger with all speed to
Kamakura to make known what had hap-
pened. In the meanwhile Tokiyori, on his
side, had been warned by a miracle not to
slay Nichiren, and had also dispatched a
messenger to stay the execution, and the
two messengers met at this little river,
which was called the River of Meeting
from that day forth. The day fixed for
the execution was the twelfth day of the
ninth month of the year, and the anniver-

changed, so that he became a patron saint of the neighbouring country, and a shrine was erected to him at Tatsu-no-Kuchi, or the dragon's mouth, where the peasants of the district still worship and pray. Further, as some say, after he had repented of his evil ways, the dragon married the beautiful Benzaiten, the goddess of mercy.

sary is still kept as a great holiday, on divine power, and his cruel heart was which people flock from all parts of the country to the Temple of Riyukôji, the main hall of which is yet called the Hall of the Leathern Carpet; for Nichiren's teaching prospered greatly, and his sect has spread itself over the whole empire, "being looked upon" (as a Japanese treatise upon the Buddhist sect says) "with as much affection as a cloud in time of drought."

Before crossing the narrow strip of sand which now joins the island of Enoshima to the mainland at the pretty little village of Katasé we must travel backwards a long journey of many centuries into the realms of myth-land.

Benzaiten, or Benten, as she is more vulgarly called, is the special patroness of the island of Enoshima; she is represented wearing a jewelled cap, in the centre of which is a white snake, the head of the snake being as the head of an old man with white eyebrows. She has eight hands; in her left hands she carries a precious ball, a spear, a precious wheel, and a bow; and in her right hands a sword, a sceptre, a key, and an Fifteen attendant spirits minister to her. Above all things, as you value your worldly prosperity, be sure that you pay due reverence to the goddess Benzaiten, for he who serves her faithfully will find his poverty changed into wealth.

arrow.

At the beginning of the sixth century the tract of land in which the city of Kamakura was afterwards built was a vast inland lake, inhabited by an evil dragon, the scourge of the surrounding country. His meat was the flesh of babes and sucklings, his drink their blood. Now there lived by the lake a certain rich man who had sixteen children, every one of whom the dragon stole and ate; so the father, The little fishing-village at the entrance mourning over the loss of his darlings, to the island of Enoshima reminds one changed his place of abode, and having col- strongly of some small hamlet on the lected the bones of his children buried Norman coast. There are the same steep them at a spot still called Chôja-dzuka, or slippery streets roughly paved with irregu"The rich man's grave." Then the drag-lar stones, the same smell of fish, the same on devoured the children of the peasants, amphibious population. The shops are who also fled in terror to a place which all for the sale of shells, dried fish, coralthey called Koshigoyé, or "the place to lines, and, above all, for that most beautiful which the children's corpses were re- of all products of the sea, the Hosugai, the moved," because they carried the remains work of some silk-worm of the deep, which of their little ones with them. After this looks like sheaves of the purest spun glass, the people consulted together, and agreed fastened together by a spongy, shell-covevery year to offer up a child as a living ered cement at one end. I do not know sacrifice to the dragon, which used to come its scientific name, but I believe that and fetch its victim at a spot at the village naturalists esteem it as a thing of great of Katasé which is still called Tatsu-no- price. The likeness to a French fishingKuchi, or "the dragon's mouth." This village is strengthened by the stalls for went on for some years, and the people the sale of votive tablets, made of manywere sorely afflicted at having to pay the coloured shells, to be hung up at the tribute of their own bone and flesh to the shrine of the goddess or carried home as monster. At last, in the year 552, there a fairing to wife, sweetheart, or children. came a great storm of thunder and light- The place might be called Notre Dame de ning, which lasted twelve days; the heav- Grace, were it not for the strange tongue ens rained stones, and the sea was and the strange garments. troubled, and sand and stones were stirred up from the bottom of the deep. Then the island of Enoshima rose out of the sea, and twelve cormorants came and flitted about its rocks, whence it is also called U-Kitaru-jima, "the island to which the cormorants came." At the same time a beautiful and shining figure of the goddess Benzaiten was seen to descend and dwell upon the island. When the evil dragon saw this, he was overawed by the

Lovely as is the little island, which, as the legend says, sprang during some volcanic upheaval from the sea, its temples are unworthy of it and of the beautiful goddess in whose honour they were built. The Buddhist priests, who swarm here, are rather unhappy just now; for they dread disestablishment at the hands of a pa rental Government, which is showing signs of declaring that the true religion of the country is the Shintô, the indigenous faith.

In this case the poor shavelings will be swept away, with all their host of imported gods and goddesses, who e images will be replaced by the simple mirror, which is the emblem of the Shintô divinity, and Benten will have to admit that she is but an usurper in the island, which rightfully belongs to the goddess Uga, the daughter of the god Sosanoo, who represents the principle of evil in the Japanese mythology.

But this question of the contest between the two faiths is too long and too intricate a subject to be more than alluded to in passing. For the present Benten still reigns at Enoshima, and we must scramble over the hill to visit her famous cave, a dark grotto about six hundred yards long, the tide-washed approach to which is rather slippery and awkward walking. There is not much to say about the cave, but the gloom gives an air of romantic mystery to the litanies which the attendant priest recites by the dim light of a single paper lantern hung up before the altar. Outside the cave, a whole company of divers, men and boys, are always in waiting to astonish travellers with

their feats, which are really remarkable,
although the lobsters and arabi (a kind of
shell-fish much affected by Japanese gour-
mets) which they bring up have been
placed in wicker baskets beforehand. Who
hides, finds! When the fun was at its
highest, and a few copper coins thrown
into the sea had made some twenty or
thirty little brown urchins tumble in all
together, there suddenly arose such a yell-
ing, such a splashing, and such diving in
pure terror, that I fancied the water must
be bewitched. The innocent cause of the
tumult was Dog Lion, who, moved by a
spirit of emulation, or perhaps by the
ambition of retrieving some particularly
small boy, had jumped in too, and was
cheerfully swimming about in the midst
of the throng. A shark in the Thames at
Eton could not have caused a greater as-
tonishment and fright than a dog that
would face the water did here at Enoshima.
"The Devil take the hindmost" was the
order of the day, and in less time than it
takes to write this Lion was left in solitary
enjoyment of his bath.
A. B. MITFORD.

THE LANDSLIPS AT NORTHWICH. · North- of Winsford both beds are met with at a much wich is the great centre of the Cheshire salt greater depth. The whole of the rock salt obtrade. The manufacture is principally car- tained is got now from the lower bed, and last ried on now at Northwich and Winsford, both year it reached nearly 150,000 tons, probably towns lying in the valley of the River Weaver, the largest quantity ever obtained in one year. though formerly Nantwich was engaged in this It may as well be said that this mining of rock trade, and Middlewich still continues so to be. | salt has had nothing whatever to do with the The position of the latter is indicated by its subsidences spoken of though the wording of the name, is lying between Northwich and Nant-note would lead readers to expect the contrary. wich. The salt is found lying in two beds, called the upper and lower rock salt. The first bed is met with in the neighbourhood of Northwich at the depth of about forty yards, and is twenty-five yards thick. Although brine springs had been known and worked as early as the time of the Norman Conquest or earlier, yet the bed of rock salt was only discovered in 1670 when searching for coal at Marbury, about a mile to the north of Northwich. During the last 200 years this rock salt has been worked, or to speak more correctly, for more than a century the upper bed was worked, when an agent of the Duke of Bridgewater sank lower still, and, after passing through about ten yards of hard clay and stone, with small veins of rock salt running through it, the lower bed of rock salt was discovered, This lower bed is between thirty and forty yards thick, but only about five yards of the purest of it is "got." This good portion lies at a depth of from 100 to 110 yards, according to the locality. In the neighbourhood

At present there is no danger to be expected from the lower bed of rock salt. The whole danger arises from the upper bed, as will be seen from the following account:-The salt trade of Cheshire is a very extensive one, and during the year 1871 upwards of 1,250,000 tons of white salt have been sent from the various works in that county. The whole of this im-. mense quantity has been manufactured from a natural brine which is found in and around Northwich and Winsford, as well as in several other smaller places. This brine is produced by fresh water finding its way to the surface of the upper bed of rock salt, technically called the Rock Head. The fresh water dissolves the rock salt, and becomes saturated with salt. The ordinary proportion of pure salt in the brine is 25 per cent. To obtain the quantity of salt above mentioned, it would be necessary to pump 5,000,000 tons of brine. The pumping of brine is incessantly going on, and as a natural consequence the bed of rock salt is being gradually dissolved

A Government inspector has been to the neighbourhood, and his report is expected very shortly.

The whole neighbourhood of Northwich is well worthy of more attention than it has received, and it is surprising that our geologists have not been able to give a better account of the rock salt formation than has yet been done.

Nature.

and pumped up. As the surface of the salt is ture, as quicksands are known to exist about eaten away, the land above it subsides. This Northwich the earthy and sandy matter of subsidence is not spread over the whole surface, the immediately overlying strata has been carbut seems to follow depressions in it, thus form- ried away by the brine streams till a large holing underground valleys with streams of brine low has been formed. This has continued till running to the great centres of pumping. the superincumbent mass could not be borne up Wherever a stream of brine runs, there the any longer, and thus suddenly fell in, filling up subsidence occurs, and in many localities the the lower cavity, but opening a large crater-like sinking is very rapid and serious, but fortunate- pit from the surface. ly is almost always gradual and continuous. An immense lake, more than half a mile in length, and nearly as much in breath, has been formed along the course of a small brook that ran into the River Weaver, and this lake is extending continually. Besides this gradual continuous sinking, which affects the town of Northwich very seriously, causing the removal and rebuilding of houses or the raising of them by screwjacks in the American fashion, the raising of the streets and so on, there is a sudden sinking of large patches of ground, leaving large deep cavities. These latter are more terrifying and dangerous. They are in the majority of cases caused by the falling-in of old disused mines in the upper bed of rock salt. These old mines were worked so as to leave but a thin crust of rock salt between the superincumbent layers of earth and the mines. The roof of the mine is supported by pillars of rock salt at intervals. Of course the weakest and most dangerous point is the old filled-up shaft. As most of these mines have been disused for nearly a century, the position of the old shafts is unknown. When the brine has eaten away the layer of rock salt left as a roof, the whole of the earth lying above falls into the mine, and an emormous crater-like hole, some 100 feet or more in depth, is formed, which in process of time becomes filled up with water, the mine itself being choked with earthy matter. In the immediate neighborhood of Northwich there are a great number of these rock pit holes, as they are called, and it is nothing very unusual for one to fall in.

The rock miners, as they are called, were at work in the lower mine last year when one of these sudden subsidences occurred. They knew nothing of it. I have been myself under this hole, and it was a fearful one to look at when it first went in. There is no communication between the upper and lower beds, and the miners have about thirty yards of hard clayey stone and rock salt between them and the upper old mines. The subsidence more particularly alluded to in your Notes is not in the immediate neighbourhood of Northwich, but rather midway between Northwich and Winsford, near Marton Hall. It is rather difficult to know what is its cause, as there is no record of any mines ever being worked in that neighbourhood. The general belief is that the rock salt, which undoubtedly underlies the whole neighbourhood, has been gradually dissolved, and that a sinking has commenced as at Northwich; then that, owing to some peculiarity of the particular overlying strata-probably to their sandy na

HALF THE COST OF STEAM-POWER SAVED. A series of experiments which I have recently tried, proves, says a correspondent of the Scientific American, that half the fuel now consumed in the production of steam-power can be saved, by using the heat that escapes in the exhaust steam from an engine to produce additional power. In the experiments tried, the exhaust from the 20-horse engine (that drove the shafting in the shop where the trial was made) was used, and the heat which this exhaust steam contained, was sufficient to drive another 20-horse engine, with the mill to which it was attached, developing as much power as the engine whose exhaust was used. The apparatus with which these surprising results were produced is very simple, and can be attached to any engine now in use. It consists of a plain tubular boiler, 10 feet long, and 26 inches in diameter, with seventy 1 3-4 inch iron flues in it. This boiler was filled with the bisulphide of carbon, and set in an upright position. The exhaust steam was passed through the flues, entering at the top end, and passing out into the atmosphere at the bottom, and was perfectly condensed in the flues, imparting its latent heat to the fluid in the boiler, which was rapidly converted into vapour to a pressure of 50 lbs to the inch. This vapour was used to work an engine in place of steam, and was condensed by cooling after being used, pumped back into the boiler, and used again continuously. Only 40 gallons of the bisulphide of carbon were required to fill the boiler, and work the engine constantly and the amount of fluid lost did not exceed half a gallon per day. The engine used to work the vapour in was 12-inch bore and 21-inch stroke, and ran at 50 revolutions per minute. The steam-engine from which the exhaust was used was 10-inch bore and 24-inch stroke, and ran at 60 revolutions per minute. The temperature of the condensed water discharged from the flues of the bisulphide boiler did not exceed 116 deg. Fahr. at any of the trials made.

3. THE FOURTH GOSPEL,

4. OFF THE SKELLIGS. By Jean Ingelow. Part IV., Saint Pauls,

5. ENGLISH RURAL POETRY,

6. THE KRIEGSSPIEL,

7. THE SITUATION IN FRANCE,

BIRTHDAY SONGS TO AN OLD Friend,
THY KINGDOM COME,

SHORT ARTICLES.

750

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