File:The American Museum journal (c1900-(1918)) (17973313810).jpg

Title: The American Museum journal
Identifier: americanmuseumjo18amer (find matches)
Year: c1900-(1918) (c190s)
Authors: American Museum of Natural History
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York : American Museum of Natural History
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
'
Text Appearing After Image:
Interior of a Confucian temple. — Dust is everywliere — blown in from the (iolii ilist-rt by wliirl- winds from the north. Stately throne and paneled screen are covered thickly with tlie fine desert sand, which ha.s dulled the color of the red-lacquered wood and golden ornaments color of the red-lacquered wood and goldeu ornaments. In other halls stand classical texts engraved on stone, but between the sacred tablets are piles of boards and benches. An atmosphere of neglect, decay, and dilapidation rests on the Temple of Confucius. iSTot only is the material dust of the Gobi desert s)irinkled over it, but something like mental dust as well, and one leaves it with a feeling of sadness that China's most precious treasures of wisdom and beauty are left untended to perish from the earth. A few hours' ride on the railroad brings one to Nank'ou and the Ming tombs. At the entrance to the valley in which lie the mortal remains of the great emperors stands a noble /A/i lou. one of the most beautiful in China. A magnificent road, once paved with mar- ble slabs but now a crumbling ruin grown thick with weeds and grass, leads through waving fields of corn. Passing down the "Avenue of the Ani- 256 iiials. wlicrc 111 huge marble lignres, standing and recuinbent, all the crea- tures of the earth are symbolized in mourning for the emperors, one arrives at a shallow stream once spanned l)y a l)eautiful marble bridge. This bridge, too, is in ruins, and at the s))londid temples and tombs beyond one finds falling walls, weed-grown terraces, and crumbling stairways. Throughout the h-ngtli and l)rea(h)i of China the picture is the same—relics priceless to history and to science neglected and cruml)ling in decay for want of the care which every civil- ize(l nation of the earth lavishes u))on the records of its antiquity. Fortu- nately, the story is different in Japan, where the temples and monuments are cared for by the nation and its ))e:)))le and stand today as permanent memo- rials of her ancient civilization. In the ■'Society for Preserving Landscapes and Historic and Natural Monuments" Jai)an has a custodian for her national

Note About Images