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
THE FLOWERY MOORLAND
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.
