It is vast,
with that look of solid massiveness which above all characterises the
Japanese and Chinese building, my measurement of its width being 529
feet, and it rises terrace-like in six stories to a height of about 120
or 130 feet: here Buddhist and Brahmin forms are combined into a most
richly-developed whole, with a voluptuousness of tracery that is simply
intoxicating, each of the five off-sets being divided up into an
innumerable series of external niches, containing each a statue of the
sitting Boodh, all surmounted by a number of cupolas, and the whole
crowned by a magnificent dagop: and when I saw this, I had the impulse
to return to my home after so long wandering, and to finish the temple
of temples, and the palace of palaces; and I said: 'I will return, and
build it as a testimony to God.'
* * * * *
Save for a time, near Cairo, I did not once stop on that homeward
voyage, but turned into the little harbour at Imbros at a tranquil
sunset on the 7th of March (as I reckon), and I moored the _Speranza_ to
the ring in the little quay, and I raised the battered motor from the
hold with the middle air-engine (battered by the typhoon in the
mid-Pacific, which had broken it from the rope-fastenings and tumbled it
head-over-heels to port), and I went through the windowless
village-street, and up through the plantains and cypresses which I knew,
and the Nile mimosas, and mulberries, and Trebizond palms, and pines,
and acacias, and fig-trees, till the thicket stopped me, and I had to
alight: for in those two years the path had finally disappeared; and on,
on foot, I made my way, till I came to the board-bridge, and leant
there, and looked at the rill; and thence climbed the steep path in the
sward toward that rolling table-land where I had built with many a
groan; and half-way up, I saw the tip of the crane-arm, then the blazing
top of the south pillar, then the shed-roof, then the platform, a
blinking blotch of glory to the watery eyes under the setting sun.
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