The priest stood on the mountain facing the multitude. In his uplifted hand was a pine branch hung with strips of white paper--emblems of the soul’s purity. Swish! Swish! Swish! Thrice the branch swept the air above the bowed heads in the plain below. The simplicity of this act of purification, the silence of the vast congregation, the beauty of the scene--all combined to fill with awe and reverence the alien spectator as well as the native worshipper. It has been my lot to attend many services on the field of battle. I have knelt with soldiers in the desert strewn with ten thousand dead outside the grey walls of Omdurman; I have heard the song of thanksgiving echo among the ruins of Khartoum over which hovered the Shade of Gordon; and under a shell-swept hill in Ladysmith I have joined in the prayer of a besieged garrison. These are memories that can never fade. Nor will there pass out of remembrance the scene of that day when an army assembled among the mountains of Manchuria to do honour to its dead. No temple raised by human hands could be so majestic and so inspiring as this valley edged round with purple hills and the deep blue of heaven above. The walls of the tabernacle were flowing contours of nearer hills clothed with pine trees and the shelving side of Mount Phœnix seamed with dark coombs in which nestle shrines and sepulchral mounds. Old marbles, ever beautiful, were never so rich and rare as this carpet of brown and green and gold woven by field and grove and river. Through every shade and tint they ran--from nutbrown to russet and auburn, from verd antique to emerald and the tender green of young corn; from orange to saffron and amber and burnished gold--all blended in one splendid polychrome. Upon this spacious floor stood the soldiers--eight thousand or more. They were men of the Second Division. On the right were three regiments of infantry in brigade formation; a regiment of cavalry was mounted between them and the artillery, who were without their guns, and on the left stood the engineers and train battalions. The long lines of khaki looked like a border of old gold in a gorgeous prayer mat spread before an altar raised upon the heights. Afar off on a lofty terrace in the shadow of a green bluff the priests had built their sanctuary--an oblong enclosure marked by banners. The entrance was a gate of two slender tree stems with a crossbar from which hung two flags--white with a red sun in the centre--emblems of Empire and of the Sun Goddess, from whom sprang the long line of Mikados who have ruled Japan. On the right front of the enclosure floated a black banner and on the left front a yellow, symbolising victory and the return home.