The Lambertville record. [volume] (Lambertville, N.J.) 1872-1968, 1886-02-10
ADAAI,S PEAK.
Ceyion's Holy Mountain to Which Bndd.
hisis Make PiIgrimages.


Far away in the mystic East there rises.
high TO the sun, q 81 eat natural altar a.
which, since the dawn of ages, man hos,
without ceasing, worshipped until now.
Over the dark-eyed, impassive people Of
that strange unalterable East ages flow and
leave no mark hundreds of generations
are born and pass away and no change Is
wrought among them. There is an awful
ness in their steady immobility. Dynasties
may rise and fall, governments may come
changed and little differences in ritual and
service may spring up, but from aeon unto
aeon the people are unchanged. 1t is the
same life that they lead and the same things
that they worship. Back, far back into the
night of time, so far back that tie very
memory of those then living is irrevocably
lost in the void of the forgotten past, the
1ark-slkinned people, wandering naked and
1nashamed in the forest depths of the is
land of Ceylon, looked with wide eyes, in
which the freshness and the wonder of the
youth time of mankind still shone with the
brightness of the dawn, upon Adams Peak,
the great solitary mountain rising, lonely
in its grandeur and height, from the low
hills around it and the sen of forest at its
feet. Clouds capped its hoary summit, storms
played around its heights, the very light
nings themselves, which they so dreaded
md reyered, seemed born among its great
rocks and deep ravines, and gazing upon
its sublimity in storm and upon its majesty
in peace, they innocently wondered till
wonder grew to worship. So slight have
been the changes wrought upon its rocks
by the wear and tear of four thousand years
Of storm that the very paths to its sacred
summit that were followed centuries before
the beginning of the present era are worn
by the feet of the weary pilgrims of to-day.
There is a legend that the iron chains fast
sned to the walls of rock to give the pill
griIns safety along the precipices of that
last sky league were placed there in the
time and by the order of Alexander The
links, though worn, are sound even yet.
About n mountain such as this, beautiful
in itself, long considered to be the Hottest
in all Colony, and holy, if only from the
steady voice of four thousand years of
prayer, legends are sure to gather, cloud
like and thick. Adams Peak is clothed
from base to summit with one great robe of 4
myth and tabled story. Not rock but
has its history, not brook without its
legends of worshipper or worshipped. Be.
meath this eyerhanging cliff Gautama, Bud.
dha slept, upon that dizzy height Buddha
in his second incarnation, prayed. AL
though specially sacred to Bnldhn, it is no.
only Buddhists who regard this mountain
as holy spot. Hindoos and Mnhomedans
respect and reverence it, as, too, did our
own Christian peoples in earlier and SIM
pier times than these. But although the |
whole mountain is regarded as holy by all
Oriental people, it is only the sacred foot.
print on the bold crag at the very summit
That is actually worshipped, TO perform n
pilgrimage to This and TO lay mn Offering
upon it is to- Buddhist what visit TO Mecca |
is to Mahomedan The time for the great.
est number o. pilgrims to visit the noun
tain is April and Nay but all the yeai
round steady stream of deyotees flows Il
this shrine of the most holy of all the relics
of their great teacher. -Gorahilt Magazine