The number of place names ending in _ji_ (temple) proclaims the former flourishing condition of Buddhism. Shikoku is a great resort of white-clothed pilgrims. Sometimes it is a solitary man whom one sees on the road, sometimes a company of men, occasionally a family. Not seldom the pilgrim or his companion is manifestly suffering from some affection which the pilgrimage is to cure. In the old days it was not unusual to send the victim of "the shameful disease" or of an incurable ailment on a pilgrimage from shrine to shrine or temple to temple. He was not expected to return. In Shikoku there are eighty-eight temples to Buddha and the founder of the Shingon sect, and it is estimated that it would mean a 760 miles' journey to visit them all. We went off our route at one point where my companion wished to visit a gorgeous shrine. A guidebook said that people flocked there "by the million," but what I was told was that last year's attendance was 80,000. The street leading to the approach to the shrine was in a series of steps. On either side were the usual shops with piled-up mementoes in great variety and of no little ingenuity, and also, on spikes, little stacks of _rin_--the old copper coin with a square hole through the middle--into which the economical devotee takes care to exchange a few sen. We climbed to the shrine when twilight was coming on. At the point where the series of street steps ended there began a new series of about a thousand steps belonging to the shrine. A thousand granite steps may be tiring after a hot day's travel in a _kuruma_. All the way up to the shrine there were granite pillars almost brand new, first short ones, then taller, then taller still, and after these a few which topped the tallest. They were conspicuously inscribed with the names of donors to the shrine. A small pillar was priced at 10 yen. What the big, bigger and biggest cost I do not know. I turned from the pillars to the stone lanterns. "They burn cedar wood, I believe," said my companion. But soon afterwards I saw a man working at them with a length of electric-light wire. The great shrine was impressive in the twilight. There was a platform near, and from it we looked down from the tree-covered heights through the growing darkness. Where the lights of the town twinkled there was a subsidiary shrine. A bare-headed, kimono-clad sailor stepped forward near us and bowed his head to some semblance of deity down there. Various fishermen had brought the anchors of their ships and the oars of their boats to show forth their thankfulness for safety at sea. In the murkiness I was just able to pick out the outlines of a bronze horse which stands at the shrine, "as a sort of scape-goat," my companion explained. "It is probably Buddhist," he said; "but you can never be sure; these priests embellish the history of their temples so."