CHAPTER XIX - THE SACRED MOUNTAIN OF OMI

Summary

It was very hot in Chungking in 1892—too hot, we feared, for us to bear, worn out as we were by the emotions and excessive heat of the river journey, entered upon too late in the summer. So, while we yet could, we secured four bearer sedan-chairs, with blue cotton awnings six yards long, after the fashion of this windless province, and, with bath-towels to bind round our heads, and sun-hats, and dark glasses, and all that following necessary for a land journey of between twenty and thirty men, were carried for a fortnight through a rich agricultural district, a region of salt wells and petroleum springs, on through the white-wax country to the foot of sacred Omi. A letter written at the time to a cousin, with whom I had two years before driven through our own lovely Lake country, and who I knew shared my delight in strange surroundings and the unexpected, will best reproduce the exhilaration consequent on emerging from the green luxuriance of semi-tropical vegetation with its steamy hothouse air. It was written from our first resting-place upon the romantic mountain-side.