Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 April 1893 — SACRED DEER IN JAPAN. [ARTICLE]

SACRED DEER IN JAPAN.

Tame Creatures to Bo Found in a Queer Mountain Town. Humphrey B. Kendrick, a former resident of Santa Barbara, Cal., who has just returned to San Francisco after a residence of several years in Japan, gives the Examiner an interesting description of a little mountain town named Nara in that country: “Everyone, or almost everyone in Nara has a deer,” said Mr. Kendrick, “and they are as plentiful there as dogs in an American town, while around the temples are great numbers, all sacred to the Japanese. And they are very tame, coming up even to the stranger and almost begging for gingerbread, of which they are very fond, and which the tourist is expected to buy for them. “When the Emperor, a great many years ago, came into Nara, and Nara, you know, was the first capital of Japan, he fode on a white deer, and that at ouco made the deer sacred, and at the Jame time it became fashionable to own one, and now they are the most common thing to be seen in the place, unless it be lanterns, which are actually without number, and of every kind and quality. A lantern in Japan is very different from one here, for there they are stone pillars, although there are some of metal, and made to be suspended. I saw some of bronze in one of the temples which had been brought from Holland long ago. But, while there are so many, the Japanese will never count them. “That would be a very wicked thing In the sight of the gods, who keep

the number a careful secret. And though sacrilegious foreigners have made the attempt no two of them | have ever counted the same. Another i feature Is the goldfish ponds—no j such fish as you see here, but 12 and I 14 Inches long, and of such a deep I color, darker than orange even. And I those with the fantails are beautiful. All of the ponds and lakes are full of them, and as the water Is very clear it is a marvelous thing to stand on the shore and watch them dart through the ripples, and when out in | a boat the very bottom assumes a golden hue.”