Perhaps it scarcely seems to you as if scenery—real landscape, not landscape painting—were art. In the Orient, however, it is surely such. Eastern peoples have for hundreds of years been passionately fond of the beautiful in nature. Chinese, Koreans, Japanese will travel on foot or by any possible conveyance many miles to see a famous view. They locate their houses in pretty places; they build temples and shrines upon commanding points. When the Korean monks, in the fifteenth century, were compelled to take refuge in the mountains, they located their buildings in surroundings harmonious to the religion. Their locations have been chosen with great care. And there is much more in scenery than the careless spectator thinks; for the Oriental scenery always contains something of the esoteric. [Illustration: PLATE XXII Wall Painting: the White Tortoise Scene of the _Sei-yeu-ki_: Pongeum-sa [Page 83]] For example, think of the Diamond Mountains. They are a remarkable tangle of peaks and ridges; measuring only thirty or forty miles across, the area is more or less elliptical in form; it is called “the twelve thousand peaks” or summits. The Diamond Mountains have been famous for two thousand years, and famous not only in Korea, but in China and Japan. They have been the theme of hundreds of poems and have furnished material for scores of books, some of them hundreds of years old. Artists have delighted in depicting their beauties. The Diamond Mountains with their twelve thousand peaks are divided into two portions. The name Diamond Mountains in itself is most suggestive; the diamond is one of the most precious symbols in Buddhism—indicating purity, clearness, brightness—and Korean Buddhism was a religion of light and illumination. The two divisions of the Diamond Mountains are known as the Inner and the Outer Kongo. The traveller may visit the outer region and realize but little of the true significance of Kongo-San. In the Inner Kongo every outstanding rock is significant. Every building has been placed with reference to some hidden meaning of the landscape, and with every step the visitor goes deeper and deeper into mystery.