China and the West

Letter from G. Lowes Dickinson to Mrs. Webb. (1912).
The cuckoos calling to one another across ranges and ranges of hills, bare and grey, green in the sun. And me lying on top of the most sacred mountain in China, where for four thousand years God has been worshipped, according to Chinese legend ; where certainly Confucius came, and emperor after emperor, and streams of pilgrims, year after year. A path lined with cypresses and flight after flight of rock-stairs brings you to the top. And there we slept in the temple with images of Taoist gods watching us and saw the full moon over the plain, and the sunrise. And I have had one of the great days that come now and again. I wish I could communicate it to you. But it evaporates in words, so I got this down to show I was thinking of you.