United States or Tunisia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
From the river, and indeed from any point of view, Canton is less imposing even than Tokiyo. Few objects rise above the monotonous level, and the few are unimpressive. There are two or three pagodas looking like shot towers. There is a double-towered Romish cathedral of great size, not yet finished. There is the "Nine-storied pagoda."
Nor is it possible for me to describe in this place the mechanical marvels of the institution the huge underground boiler-house, with its sixteen boilers; the electrician's room, clean and bright as a new dollar, with its "purring dynamos" and its immense switch-board; the tunnel through which books are delivered by electric trolley to the legislators in the Capitol, within eight minutes of the time they are applied for; and, most wonderful of all, the endless chain, with its series of baskets, whereby books are not only brought down to the reading room, but re-delivered, at the mere touch of a button on whatever "deck" of the nine-storied "book-stacks" they happen to belong to.
A nine-storied pagoda has been inset into the south-eastern face, and temple buildings crown the summit. It was surprising how well my men lived on board the boat. They had three good meals a day, always with rice and abundance of vegetables, and frequently with a little pork. Cooking was done while we were under way; for the purpose we had two little earthenware stoves, two pans, and a kettle.
Within this basin is deposited the ancient P'hra-batt, or golden stool, the whole being surmounted by a quadrangular canopy, under a tapering, nine-storied umbrella in the form of a pagoda, from ten to twelve feet high and profusely gilt.
The walls, ruined in parts, showed ghostly shades of ruins beyond; and soaring high above all, Khumba Rána's nine-storied Tower of Victory lifted a giant finger to the unheeding heavens.
Word Of The Day