What were the qualities of these stones that they should have been hauled for hundreds of miles and prized by shoguns and Zen aesthetes alike? What did Zen artists look for when they scavenged the surrounding mountains for special rocks? They wanted rocks that looked like the mountains and crags in ink paintings. This meant light-colored stones with striated sides and sharp edges, with no hint of the hand of man about them. They looked not so much for odd formations as for natural shapes that possessed an authoritative, monumental quality. One particularly prized shape was flat-topped and vertical-sided, looking like a massive tree stump cut off about a foot above the ground. Another valuable stone was shaped like a steep-sided volcanic island which, nestled in a bed of sand, gave the impression of rising from the depths of the ocean. Oblong stones with lengthwise striations or incisions were valued for their similarity to towering vertical mountains; and rounded, flat-bottomed stones, for their resemblance to natural river rocks. The subjective "feel" of a stone was important; perfectly smooth stones or those with no memorable characteristics had no place in _kare sansui_. Those used must have the vigorous face of centuries, the weathered texture of antiquity. Daisen-in was unquestionably the best of the Zen "painting" gardens: possibly designed by an experienced Zen painter, it contained the finest stones from an entire era of intensive collecting; and it was heir to centuries of garden mastery, from which was distilled the essence of landscape art. Its understated authority is the product of a long development of such Zen ideals as simplicity, starkness, austerity, and spareness. One would be tempted to declare it the finest example of the Zen _kare sansui _art were it not for an even more striking garden of the same era: Ryoan-ji. Unlike Daisen-in, the garden at Ryoan-ji is not a symbolic mountain scene. It is instead a work of abstract art on a canvas of sand which goes beyond a symbolic representation of a landscape scene to provide a distillation of the very universe. It is internationally regarded as the very essence of Zen, and it is almost impossible to describe, in either words or pictures. It has a spirit that seems to rise up for those who come into its presence, evoking an immediate response even in someone who has no understanding of Zen.