When all cultivation had disappeared, and the road was a mere cinder track over a moorland of ashes, the flowers and bushes still grew in clusters here and there. The most abundant plant was a large bushy knotweed covered with sprays of white blossoms, and this grew far up the mountain-side. There were also clumps of tall bocconia, a campanula with large pink or lavender flowers sprinkled in each bell with tiny ink-spots, and various less showy flowers. The flora on this side of the mountain, devastated by the last eruption, in 1706, is not so rich as that on the northern slope. As the ascent became steeper we got into a wood of dwarfed and scraggy pine-trees, which extended as far as Tarōbō, a large tea-house with a little temple attached, and then suddenly ceased; above this there was only an occasional dead stump to break the monotonous surface of ashes. Here every pilgrim purchases a stick to help him up the mountain—an octagonal staff of birch, about five feet long, with an inscription burned on it, and for a few coppers the priests on duty at the summit will add a red stamp to prove that the owner has actually been there.
We reached the second shelter beyond Tarōbō quite early in the afternoon; great masses of wet mist came constantly driving up the mountain-side; there was plenty of room in the hut, and nothing to be gained by going higher, so we decided to stay there for the night. All the regular tracks up Fuji are divided into ten portions, and a rest-house is supposed to mark the end of each division; but they vary much in their accommodation for travellers, and often get destroyed during the winter, so it is well to find out before starting which are habitable and which are not. Number Two (Ni-go-me), on the Gotemba path, was a roomy hut, built with blocks of lava; from below it looked like a wall with a hole in it, from above it was not visible, for the ashes covering its roof of rough planks were simply a continuation of the mountain slope; there was no chimney, but a mass of snow was piled over the fireplace, which dripped through the roof into a tub and supplied the establishment with water. By each shelter a small white flag fluttered on a pole to make its situation obvious.
THE SECOND SHELTER IN THE GOTAMBA PATH
Nothing could be more dreary than this spot on such an afternoon: above, below, and on each side the waste of purple-gray ashes, light-green spots of knotweed and thistle, only enforcing the gloom of its color, seemed to stretch interminably into the mist, and nothing broke the monotony of the long oblique line except the little eminence of Hoei-zan, sticking up like a pimple on the great slope of Fuji, which occasionally showed its outline through the vague and formless clouds.
Inside it was, at any rate, warm; the raised floor was covered with coarse matting, and on this quilts were spread, and soon after dark we were all in bed. Some later arrivals had added to our numbers, and we slept thirteen in that hut, including the host and hostess; but this was nothing to the crowd at the top, where I think we were nineteen, perhaps more, for in some parts of the floor there must have been two or three under a quilt, and it was difficult to count them. Even here on Fuji you do not escape the all-seeing eye of the Japanese police; your passport is examined by the keepers of the hut, and is copied into a book which gives every night the names and addresses of those who sleep under the roof. About two o’clock in the morning we were wakened by our host, who took us outside, and there at last was Fuji itself, straight over our heads, every detail softened, but clearly visible, and the summit looking ridiculously near in the brilliant moonlight. Below us was the slope of ashes and the moorland over which we had walked; and in the distance the Hakone Mountains, already far below our level, lay half hidden by masses of moonlit cloud. More energetic men might have started at once for the final climb, but after gazing and shivering for a few minutes we turned into our hard beds again, and it was not till after sunrise that we left our hut, our party increased by a dreary and footsore young soldier in a soiled white uniform, and a cheerful coolie, carrying about a hundred-weight of planks to repair one of the higher shelters.
The path goes zigzagging up to one rest-house after another, and there was not one of them which we failed to patronize; even Number Seven, which was a heap of ruins with nothing in the way of drink but a tub of melted snow, was an excuse for a few minutes’ halt. In the clear morning sunlight Fuji looked small, as most mountains do when there are no clouds to give mystery and suggest height; but it was a grand morning for distant views, and the sunshine brought out vividly the strange and brilliant colors of the various materials which form the mountain—gray ashes, blue lava, and the reds and oranges of burned earth.
