The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-03-07

i put up in cOmmemorotion of some of the great heroes of Japan's past
 Some Mighty Statues of Buddha. Every one has heard of the statue of Buddha at Kamakura- I have spent d week in its shadow during my stay in Japan. It Is an immense sitting figure made of bronze plates, so fitted together that it looks as though it were cut out by a sculptor, and forming together one of the great art works of the world. The , figure is enormous. It is as high as D hve-story house, and from knee to knee it measures 35 feet. It's eyes are of pure gold and they are more than three feet in length; while the ears are so long that if you stood in the hole of one of the lobes you could not reach to the top. This Buddha has mouth yard wide. It's face is eight feet long and its thumb Is just one foot In thickness It's beauti- ful head is covered with what looks like curls, but what the Japanese tell us rep resent snails. Tradition says that Buddha was so kind to all animal creation that the snails, as an evidence of their grati tude, crawled upon his head to shield him from the sun. There are more than 800 such snails on Buddhas head, and each of them Is nine inches high.
 The making of work like this would be difficult today. It would tax the skill
 
 made by the Japanese 200 years before Columbus started across the Atlantic and found the new world. At that time our ancestors were still eating with their fin- gers and sleeping on straw.
 An even greater Buddha, although less known, is one which I have just seen In the temple at Nara, about 25 miles from here. This Buddha is under cover and 1t is almost impossible to get a good pho tograph of 1t. It stands in building, fill ing a space larger than the dome of the Capitol at Washington. It Is made of bronze, and 1t sits upon a lotus flower of solid bronze, against a background of carved gold. The flower is big enough for the foundation of a good sized house. and each of the lotus petals would carpet parlor This Buddha Is 5S feet high and it's eyes are three feet in length The hand is about three feet long. l measured one foot where 1t lies upon the knee. It Is just 16 feet from heel to toe. The statue is symmetrical and the face Is won derfully beautiful, personifying content ment and repose. This statue is almost twice as old as that at kamakura. It was made many centuries ago, along about the time that little Mohammed, the founder of the great religion which bears his name was half-naked boy, playing in the sands of Arabia. The head of the original statue fell off and was burned several hundred years ago. The present head was made during the 18th century and the remainder of the body was made more than 800 years before that time.
 Here, in Kyoto, there Is Buddha which is all head and shoulders. It fills temple and is bigger than either of the Buddhas I have mentioned It has eyes five feet long, nostris two feet wide, and it measures 43 feet across the shoulders It is almost 50 feet high and it has nose nine feet long. Just outside the temple is one of the biggest bells of Ja- pan which Is rung now and then to wake up the statue. It weighs 63 tons and is about as big as haystack.
 All of the above Buddhas are old. saw one at Hyogo. about two hours ride