Part 6

Clouds had, as usual, begun to form about mid-day, and there were only occasional peeps of distance, but the crater itself was worthy of the journey, and occupied us until the bitterly cold wind drove us to shelter. Here, as on other mountains, I noticed that the first object of the native is to get under cover; all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them may be spread before his eyes, but if there is a little smoky cabin, however rough and uncomfortable, the professional mountaineer goes inside and stays there. This one was not luxurious; near the doorway, the only aperture for admitting light, there was a smouldering wood-fire, where our food was cooked before we lay down to try and rest on the loose and creaky floor-boards; little blasts came like squirts of cold water through the cracks of the unmortared walls, and it was a relief when a general movement of the sleepers--for a Japanese can apparently sleep anywhere--showed the approach of sunrise.

The morning was clear and bright, and we all crouched in nooks of the rocks, wrapped in our quilts, and gazed at the straight gray line of the Pacific and the gradually brightening line above it, watching for the first sign of the approaching god. On the most prominent rock a priest knelt, waving strips of paper tied to a stick and chanting prayers and eulogies, and soon the sun rose, as he assuredly will every morning, whether he is prayed to or not. There

was such a vast space of mysterious blue sea and distance below the horizon that the big orange ball appeared to be already half-way up the heavens when we first saw it. This daily occurrence seems ever new and wonderful, always has something of the miraculous about it, and to most minds it brings a sense of thankfulness, as the sunset gives that of repose; though why we should feel grateful both that it is time to begin to work and time to leave off is a puzzle to me. My thoughts turned to an early morning near Plevna, and to an honest Turk, who, as the sun rose over the bare Bulgarian hills, turned on his box-seat, and, gravely touching his forehead, wished a good-day to his “little brothers” in the carriage he was driving. There was a mixture of courteousness and solemnity in his manner which seemed exactly suited to the important moment.

When the orange glow had turned to a dazzling glare, we walked round to the foot of Kenga-mine, the highest of the peaks encircling the crater, and looked westward at the shadow of Fuji, a great pyramid of tender blue stretching for miles across the country at its foot, darkening a slice of the sunlit distant mountains, and towering above them into the sky, clearly defined on the light mists and clouds of the horizon. So sharp was the outline that it seemed as if our two shadows ought to show on the distant sky; but though we waved our arms frantically there was no visible movement on the edge; we were too small. When we returned to get some breakfast many of the pilgrims were saying their morning prayers at the little temple. “Sengen Sama” is the goddess of Fuji; a prettier name for her is “Ko no hana saku ya Hime”--“the princess who makes the blossoms of the trees to open.” There is another little temple dedicated to her on the north side of the crater, and many more imposing ones in various parts of Japan. On a banner which floated in front of this second temple there was an inscription in Japanese, and under it these words in English, “Place for worship the Heaven.” I suppose this was an effort in the direction of civilization and rationalism, but I resented it as an attempt to explain away the flower-loving princess, and to dethrone her from the mountain-top where she has been worshipped in peace for so many centuries. Close by the banner is another spring, “The Famous Golden Water,” and a small shed, where bundles of chopsticks and other mementos are sold, and where for ten sen you can buy a tin can full of the famous water to take home to your friends. Most of the descending pilgrims have one or two of these tins slung round them with the rest of their travelling-kit. The regular Fuji pilgrim is dressed in a white tunic with loose sleeves, close-fitting white cotton drawers, white socks and gaiters, and a pair of straw sandals; he wears the usual big hat, which serves as an umbrella, and slung round his shoulders he has a light rush mat, which can be shifted to either side to keep off sun or rain. Round his neck he has a string of beads, a little incessantly tinkling bell, and a few pairs of extra sandals on a cord, and fastened to his waistband is the small package containing his personal baggage; he carries in his hand either the octagonal birch staff or a

longer peeled wand, with some paper tied round the end of it. The dress of the women is the same as that of the men, except that they wear a short petticoat under the tunic, about as long as a Highlander’s kilt. I saw none of them adorned with the bell and beads, so perhaps these are reserved for the men. It is only of late years that women have been allowed to climb the sacred mountain.

No one point of the crater’s edge is high enough to give a panorama; you have to walk all round, about two miles, in order to see the view on every side. Eastward is the country round Yokohama and Tōkyō, with the Pacific beyond as horizon; southward, too, is the ocean, with the Izu Peninsula jutting out into it, and the sweep of Suruga Bay bringing it close under your feet; westward you get a glimpse of the Fujikawa River, with range after range of mountains behind it; and to the northward a chain of little lakes lies at the base of Fuji, these, too, backed up by mountains, which rise, one behind another, as far as you can see.

In some places the outer wall descends abruptly into the crater; in others, as by the Golden Water, there is a narrow plateau between the two. The crater itself is four or five hundred feet deep, the north side mostly precipitous rock, and the south side, under Kenga-mine, a steep slope of snow and débris; all the peaks round it have names, and one of them near the Silver Water is dotted with cairns raised in honor of Jizó, the patron saint of travellers, who helps little children to cross the Buddhist Styx. There is a rough path all round the crater, leading over some of the peaks, inside some, and outside others, which is kept in passable condition by men who collect a few coppers for their labor: the pilgrim season is harvest-time for the dwellers round Fuji, and its barren top pays well for cultivation.

It was after ten o’clock before we had made the circuit and seen all the sights; we met our coolies by the long row of huts at the top of the Yoshida path, and could see the village itself, our destination, lying in the blue hollow below us. Groups of ascending and descending pilgrims were visible for a long distance on the slope; as we looked down on them we saw only big round hats with an arm sticking out, and two little feet working underneath. After a final cup of tea at one of the guest-houses we passed under the wooden torii, and began the descent, a very steep and stony one, the loose cinders and lumps of lava requiring attention at every footstep. At Number Nine station there is a little shrine called “Sengen’s Welcome,” and at Number Eight there are six or eight good-sized huts built on a spur of harder lava, making quite a little village, which can be seen on a clear morning from the foot of the mountain. Here the Subashiri route branches off to the right; ours to Yoshida turned to the left, and we went sliding with long strides down an incline of loose ashes and sand, into which our legs sank up to the knee at every step. It was rapid but fatiguing, and required very high stepping to avoid heavy and ignominious falls. The track is marked by hundreds of cast-off “waraji”--straw sandals--a common object on all Japanese roads, but here especially plentiful. My companion had provided himself in Yokohama with a stock of them, specially made to fit over the European boot; they were carefully adjusted and tied on by our servants and porters, but I noticed that after the first hundred yards they had always worked loose, and after a quarter of a mile they were hanging gracefully round his ankles instead of protecting his feet. The enjoyment of walking depends so much upon foot-gear that I am shy of trying experiments, and I found that my stout boots with plenty of nails served as well on Fuji as on any other mountain. Worn as Japanese wear them, with a thong passing between the big toe and the next, the waraji hold on well; they are soon worn out, or made useless by the breaking of one of the strings of twisted grass which tie them to the ankles; but this does not matter, for new ones can be bought for about a half-penny at any road-side house. This part of Fuji was very desolate, the rocks were formless blocks piled up without any arrangement of line, and the débris was too loose for any plant to find a foothold; but after a few thousand feet a ridge of more solid lava rose on each side of the gully we were descending, and

that on our left soon began to show some vegetation. There were pines and larches, whose dwarfed and twisted forms showed the hardship of their lives, and among them were some flowers too, clusters of a delicate pink rhododendron, crimson wild roses, columbines, clematis, golden-rod, and orange lilies.

The glissade of fine ashes brought us down as far as Number Five station, and there we rejoined the upward path, for no one tries to ascend over this loose stuff. High up in the gully we had seen men digging out snow from under the ashes, and taking it across the flank of the mountain to supply one of the rest-houses on the ridge to our right, and troops of ascending pilgrims were visible now and then as a turn of their path brought them in profile against the sky. Below Number Five there is but one track; it plunges at once into a thick undergrowth of bushes, and after this we had no more desolate wastes of ashes, but a constant succession of trees and flowers, temples, and luxurious rest-houses, gay with the cotton flags presented to them by their patrons. The forest through which this path leads covers a steep ridge of lava; the trees are mostly pine and other conifers, often very fine old specimens, and under them is a tangle of flowering shrubs and plants and of fallen timber. The people we met coming up seemed to appear suddenly under our feet out of the green gloom; one party had always to draw aside while the other passed; at times the path was a stairway of old roots, at others a ditch between high banks, and never wide enough for two to walk abreast. We heard a sound of singing below us, and stood on the bank while about twenty white-clad pilgrims filed by, men of all ages, each with a little bell tinkling at his waist; the front ones chanted a short strain, which those at the back took up and answered, and their song was faintly audible in the woods above us long after the last had disappeared up the winding path. The chant is called “Rokkon shōjō”--the six senses purified--the six, according to the Buddhists, being eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and heart, and it is only sung by the Fuji pilgrims.

At Number Two station we made a long halt, emptied the ashes out of our boots, and washed our feet in the tubs of water which the little servants brought us. It was a very different kind of place from the rough shelter on the Gotemba side; the path came down a few steps as it emerged from the wood, passed under a torii by a small temple, and then spread out into quite a wide space in front of a long tea-house crowded with pilgrims. On the opposite side of this space were three or four platforms, spread with blankets and shaded with matting; these too were occupied by groups of guests, who smoked and drank tea as they rested, and below them the tops of the trees were cut away to give a space of open sky and a view of the distance. Hundreds of little flags were fluttering from long bamboo poles, and at the other end of this lively scene the path went down a few more steps, and became again a narrow track through the dense forest. The flowers all the way were abundant and beautiful, constantly varying as we descended from one zone to another; at last the wood became thinner, and we could get glimpses of the distance, and of the grassy ridges on each side of us, tinged with pale mauve by masses of funkia in blossom; and when we reached the temple and the large open square of the Uma-gaeshi we were at the end of the trees, and before us was a great slope of moorland leading down for miles and miles to the pine grove by Yoshida.

There is but one break in the long walk through flowers and grass--a little tea-house called Naka-no-chaya, whose three pine-trees are distinguishable for a long distance across the moor. All round it there are monumental pillars covered

with inscriptions, which look like tombstones, but were really erected by pilgrims to commemorate the number of ascents which they have made. The variety of plants which grow and flourish on this slope of fine cinders is truly remarkable. The most abundant flower was a pale mauve scabious, which gave a prevailing tint to the whole moorland, but the most conspicuous was a tall, slender day-lily

with a pale yellow flower, which shone like a star in the evening when the color had gone from all the others. A dark purple-blue campanula (_Platycodon grandiflorum_) was also very effective, and a bright crimson pink (_Dianthus superbus_) with beautifully fringed petals. But it would be hopeless to try and enumerate them. I find in a sketchbook a list of fifty-seven which I noted on the way between Naka-no-chaya and Yoshida. A little later in the year this mass of flowers and grass is mown down and carried to the villages at the foot of the mountain.

The last part of our walk was through a grove of grand red pines, which seem to do better on this volcanic soil than anywhere else in Japan, and then across a few fields to the top of the long village street, where we at last found our tea-house and our baggage, and comfortable rooms, and settled down for a night of well-earned repose.

FUJI FROM SUZUKAWA.

Oct. 3, 1892.

Fuji is quite free from clouds this morning, and in the soft autumnal sunshine every detail is clearly visible as I sit with the shutters wide open and eat my breakfast. The foreground is a level plain of rice-fields, which stretches away for three or four miles to where the first gentle ascent is marked by a line of villages and trees, and in some

places, where irrigation is possible, the terraced fields climb a little way up the mountain. Above them is a band of cultivated country, the general effect of it dark green, varied by stripes of paler green fields. At first the forms are sharply defined, but higher up the whole becomes a blue-green mass. Next above this is a band of moorland with no trees on it, lighter and warmer in color, the grasses and plants which cover it tinged with yellow or orange by the autumn. As the morning sun shines on it little blue shadows, in spots and waving lines, mark the undulations of its surface. This belt of moorland reaches to the height of about five thousand feet, and is very rich in flowers. Above it, again, is a great band of forest; the warm color of the deciduous trees at its lower edge gradually merges into the dark blue-green of the pines, which mount a long way up on the summits of the ridges that at this point seam the surface of the mountain. It is over this forest-land that the morning clouds generally begin to form. As I write, a little one, that looks like a puff of white steam, is beginning to float over the trees, and this will grow until in an hour’s time the upper part of Fuji will be invisible. The well-defined gullies are a light orange-red tint, and the contrast between them and the dark pines on the dividing ridges is the strongest opposition of color on Fuji, except that where the snow and the black lava meet at its summit. As the gullies ascend and the pines disappear the color again becomes more uniform, dark gray with a tinge of Indian red, the red disappearing and the gray becoming a rich purple as it runs up in irregular points and lines among the lower snows. Only the very highest band is a solid white; on the left of the truncated top is Kenga-mine, the highest point of the crater’s edge, and next it a flat line shows where the Murayama path enters; to the right of this a well-marked ridge of lava runs high up into the snow, and can be traced down to the moorland, cutting off the Hōeizan portion from the rest of the mountain. Beyond this ridge are two flatter curves--the summits of Jizotaké and Kwannon-také--on the eastern side of the crater. The general outline of the mountain on the left is one simple curve, the almost level line where it begins to ascend from the Fujikawa River becoming steeper and steeper towards the top. The most distinct acceleration of grade is where the forests end and the ridges of lava begin. The outline on the right is broken just above the pine-clad ridges by the projection of Hōeizan, and again at the top of the moorland by another smaller hill--Tsurugi-zan; and the effect on this side is not so much a curve as two inclined planes, the first from Kwannon-také to Hōeizan, the second from there to the moorland, after which it becomes an undulating line of mounds leading away to the Ashitaka range of older mountains. On this right side there is much less variety of color, a sharp ridge of warm orange lava makes a crest to Hōeizan, but the great cup-like hollow behind it and the treeless slope below it are one uniform gray. Nearly two centuries have passed since the eruption which altered this outline of Fuji and destroyed the vegetation, and many more will have to elapse before the ashes are sufficiently disintegrated to entice back the trees and flowers.

SOME WANDERINGS IN JAPAN

SOME WANDERINGS IN JAPAN

The lakes which lie to the north of Fuji are not much visited by foreigners; they are rather difficult of access, and the accommodation in the tea-houses in that district is not luxurious; but for those who can walk well, and put up with ordinary Japanese food and lodging, the scenery will atone for everything. The old hills on the north once looked over a great sloping plain to the shore of Suruga Bay, but the upstart Fuji arose and blocked their view to the south; streams of lava poured from it, and rolled down till they were stopped by these buttresses of ancient rock, damming the rivers, and so forming this chain of lakes at their base. Where the lava has been covered with fine ashes, vegetation soon begins to conceal the work of destruction, but the larger flows resist all attempts at cultivation; they still stand in wide ridges above the rest of the country, gray lichens cover them, and dwarfed trees find a foothold in the crevices between their blocks. The winding tracks which lead across them are bad enough, for every little hump in the path is not a pebble which rolls aside as your foot touches it, but is a knob of solid rock, and it is your toe that has to give way; the untrodden part of the scrubby forest would stop any animal but an active monkey. We traversed one of the widest flows, called Aoki-ga-hara (green-tree moor), from the number of evergreens which grow over it, on the way between Shoji, the smallest, and Motosu, the largest of the lakes, walking for hours in single file along a narrow trail with hardly an opening anywhere in the dense foliage; it was late in the evening, and the imprecations in Japanese and English ought to have thrown a lurid light on that dusky path. The dividing-line between the lava and the older rock is as clearly visible now as it was on that day when the molten torrent was arrested in its course and piled itself in a solid wave against the immovable hills. Some subterranean settling must still be going on, for a few years ago the lakes began to rise, and they have remained at the higher level, so that as we rowed along the shore we could see below us the roofs of cottages and the fences of rice-fields, and forests of dead pines rose gaunt and bare out of the water. Of all the places I saw in Japan, Motosu seemed the most remote; the rise of the lake must have ruined many of the inhabitants, and a settled gloom seemed to hang over the few charcoal-burners, wood-cutters, and fishermen who remain. We found rooms in an old tea-house, where fine wood-work, now blackened and decayed, showed signs of a former prosperity which will hardly revive unless prices rise, for when we left the next morning the landlord sadly presented us with a bill for nineteen sen (about sixpence), which for two foreigners and two servants came to a very modest sum per head. We crossed the lake by boat, and were landed at the foot of a trackless hill-side, overgrown with tall grasses and wild flowers, through which it was difficult to walk, but our local guides soon found a path which led us in the direction of the Fujikawa. Here we were off the volcanic soil, the beeches and other trees were magnificent, and in one wood we walked between banks of maidenhair fern (_Adiantum pedatum_) growing five or six feet high. How well I remember that day of glorious sunshine, the view back over the lake with Fuji towering

behind it, the mountain road through forests with new trees and plants at every turn, the gaudy butterflies, the long zigzag descent by the pine-clad spur which brought us to the Suzukawa Valley, and the gorgeous sunset as we whirled down the rapids to Shimoyama. There are five lakes in the chain, Motosu, Shoji, Nemba, Kawaguchi, and Yamanaka, and they descend in level from Motosu on the west to Yamanaka on the east. Nemba lies in a hollow of wooded hills, with a couple of partially drowned villages on its shore, in which the cottage roofs are strangely constructed, and the people wear long knickerbockers of blue striped cotton. Kawaguchi is the most beautiful of them all; its waters have only risen a foot or two, so that no damage has been done except the submersion of a few fields, and Funatsu and Kodachi, with picturesque old temples and cottages shaded with gourds, like Jonah’s, are thriving towns compared with the other lake-side hamlets.