Until the year 1500, Fuji wore a perpetual smoke-wreath, and every century saw a great eruption. The last, in 1707, continued for a month, and threw out the loose cinders, ashes, and lumps of baked red clay that still cover the mountain. Ashes were carried fifty miles, damming a river in their path, covering the plain at its base six feet deep with cinders, and forming an excrescence on the north side, which still mars the perfect symmetry of the cone.
Umagayeshi, or Turn Back Horse, is four thousand feet above the sea, and the other eight thousand feet are surmounted in a distance of fifteen miles. We desired to reach Station Eight by four o’clock; either to sleep there until three o’clock the next morning, or to push on to the tenth and last station, rest there, and see the sun rise, from the door-way of that summit rest-house. Our two Colorado mountaineers had faced the slope like chamois, and were leaping the rocks walling the first station, before the female contingent had left the torii. Of the fifteen coolies accompanying us, three were assigned to each woman, with orders to take her to the top if they had to carry her pickaback. After an established Fuji fashion, one coolie went first with a rope fastened around the climber’s waist, while another pushed her forward. Aided still further by tall bamboo staffs, we were literally hauled and boosted up the mountain, with only the personal responsibility of lifting our feet out of the ashes.
For the first three or four miles, the path led through a dense, green bower, carpeted with vines, and starred with wild flowers and great patches of wild strawberries. Scaling moss-covered log steps, we passed through temples with gohei, or prayer papers, hanging from the gates and doors, and bare Shinto altars within. At one shrine, the sound of our approaching footsteps was the signal for blasts from a conch-shell horn and thumps on the hanging drum, and the priests, in their purple and white gowns and black pasteboard hats, gave us a cheerful welcome, and many cups of hot barley-tea. At our request, they stamped our clothing with big red characters, the sacred seal or crest of that holy station, and sold us the regulation pilgrim’s staff, branded with the temple mark. The old priest, to dazzle us with his acquirements, and to show his familiarity with foreign customs, glibly placed the price of the alpenstock at “Sen tents.”
The forest ended as suddenly as if one had stepped from a door-way, and a sloping dump of bare lava and cinders stretched upward endlessly; the whole cone visible, touched with scudding bits of thin white clouds. Every dike and seam of lava between the forest edge and the summit was clearly seen, and the square blocks of rest-houses, though miles away, stood out on the great ash-heap as if one could touch them. It was apparent that the walk would be merely a matter of perseverance. There are no dizzy precipices, no dangerous rocks, no hand-over-hand struggles, nor narrow ledges, nor patches of slippery stone—only a steadily ascending cinder path to tread. Above the forest line, nothing interrupts the wide views in every direction, and the goal is in plain sight.
After we had passed the third station, the scudding clouds closed in and hid the summit, and we trudged along, congratulating ourselves on our escape from the glaring sun while we were out on the open lava slope. Station Number Four was closed and its roof in partial ruins, where a rolling stone had crashed in during the winter, but at the next two huts we rested, in company with a sturdy mountaineer, his wife and baby, who were going up to open Station Number Nine for the summer. The baby was strapped on its father’s back, its little bare toes sticking out from its tight swaddling-gown and curling up in comical balls as the wind grew colder. Our two veterans of Pike’s Peak were far ahead, merely white spots on the dark, chocolate-brown slope, but we all intended to overtake them and come in with them at the end of the day.
Suddenly the drifting clouds swept down, curling along the dark lava, like steam, and wrapping us in a gray mist that blotted out everything. Another gust of wind brought a dash of rain, and hurried us to the lee wall of a closed hut for shelter. The shower came harder and faster, and the baggage-coolies with water-proofs and umbrellas were far in advance, invisible in the mist. We pushed on, and after climbing a hundred yards in loose ashes, found ourselves on the sliding track of the descent. We struck away blindly to the right and mounted straight upward. A seam of hard lava soon gave us secure foothold, but presently became a net-work of tiny cascades. My cheerful little coolie, in his saturated cotton suit, tried to encourage me, and passing the rope around a horn of lava at one breathing-stop, pointed upward, and assured me that there was clear sunshine above. Glancing along the sloping lava-track, we saw a foaming crest of water descending from those sunny uplands, and had barely time to cross its path before the roaring stream came on and cut off retreat.
After two hours of hard climbing in the blinding rain and driving wind, we reached the shelter of Station Number Eight, chilled and exhausted. This hut, a log-cabin faced with huge lava blocks, its low roof held down by many bowlders, and its walls five feet in thickness, consists of one room about twelve by thirty feet in size. Two doors looked sheer down the precipitous mountain-slope, and a deep window, like that of a fortress, was set in the end wall. The square fireplace, sunken in the floor, had its big copper kettle swinging from a crane, and the usual stone frame for the rice-kettle. When the doors were barred and braced with planks against the fury of the storm, the smoke, unable to escape, nearly blinded us. Our dripping garments and the coolies’ wet cotton clothes were hung to dry on the rafters over the fireplace, where they slowly dripped. The master of Number Eight had opened his rest-house only five days before, and with his young son and two servants found himself called on to provide for us with our retinue of seventeen servants, for four young cadets from the naval college in Tokio, storm-bound on their way down the mountain, and a dozen pilgrims—forty-two people in all.
Warmed, and comforted with a stray sandwich, we were glad enough to go to bed. Each of us received two futons, one of which made the mattress and the other the covering, while basket-lids served for pillows. The floor was cold as well as hard, and the rows of cotton towels hung on the walls by preceding pilgrims fluttered in the draughts from the howling blasts that shook the solid little hut. The shriek and roar and mad rushes of wind were terrifying, and we were by no means certain that the little stone box would hold together until morning. One hanging-lamp shed a fantastic light on the rows of heads under the blue futons, and the stillness of the Seven Sleepers presently befell the lonely shelter.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE DESCENT OF FUJIYAMA
From Saturday until Tuesday, three endless days and as many nights, the whirling storm kept us prisoners in the dark, smoke-filled rest-house. What had been the amusing incidents of one stormy night became our intolerable routine of life. Escape was impossible, even for the hardy mountaineers and pilgrims at the other end of the hut, and to unbar the door for a momentary outlook threatened the demolition of the shelter. A tempest at sea was not more awful in its fury, but our ears became finally accustomed to the roar and hiss of the wind, and the persistent blows it dealt the structure. The grave problem of provisioning the place in time confronted us, and after our one day’s luncheon was exhausted, it became a question how long the master of the station could provide even fish and rice for forty people.