THE CRATER OF FUJI
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
AN OLD RED PINE AT YOSHIDA