Any number of mountain climbs, more or less difficult (so suited to all) can be made from Miyanoshita. We have just returned from a lovely expedition to Lake Hakone and the hot district of Ojigoku. Leaving the hotel at midday in bamboo chairs attached to poles and each carried by four coolies, we ascend the mountains. The motion is smooth and easy, as they all keep step together, to a melodious chorus of grunts, the front coolies answering the hind ones.
These grass mountains that we are in the midst of, are so beautiful. They have scarcely any trees, but their gradual slopes are covered with the pale, sickly green of rush or bamboo grass, that imparts to them a peculiarly pleasing, even effect. Frequently there is a column of smoke curling up their sides, from some hot spring, for all this district is intensely volcanic, and at the village of Ashinoyu, where we rest and give tea to the men, there are numerous hot springs and baths. It is a desolate place, and is made more so by the clouds coming down and completely damping us and the view. It is rather dreary jogging along with these human ponies in a dense mist, out of which loom palely the foremost bearers, when, as suddenly as we came into it, the fog lifted, leaving us the most beautiful cloud effects of white filmy vapours, trailing low down on the mountain side, with a patch of blue sky just beginning to show, and the sun shining up there behind those opaque masses of cloud and mist, making them appear so fleecy and transparent. It is now a lovely summer's afternoon above and around us, and immediately afterwards we have below, an enchanting view of Hakone and its deep blue lake, so deep that, though it has been fathomed for five miles, the bottom has yet to be found. We see the green wooded peninsula, jutting so boldly out into the lake, that from this distance we think it is an island, and on this ideal spot, hidden far away from the burdensome etiquette of public life, the Mikado is building himself a palace, that is approached by the beautiful cryptomeria avenue, that also leads to Hakone. Whilst we are waiting at the village below for our chairs and coolies to be shipped on a boat, we "kodak" a charming group of Japanese children; one of our coolies actively assisted in arranging them, and I noticed took good care to include himself in the picture, for this useful and companionable little instrument has become familiar even to the Japanese, and later on the men were so pleased when we did a group of them in the prow of the boat, smoking and eating their rice out of bamboo baskets, with a division for a bonne bouche of some morsels of fish. These coolies are delightfully merry fellows, always willing, always cheerful, whether tired or hungry, never shirking work, and ready to help each other, laughing and seeing the fun of any little passing incident. Most of them speak a few words of English, the object of every coolie in Japan being to learn it, as they earn so much more money from foreigners. You constantly find, that whilst waiting, they study a blue Japanese-English phrase book, exceptionally badly compiled.
We are rowing three miles across the lake in a sampan, with an upturned prow, propelled by some oarsmen, and which much resembles a picture of an old Roman galley. Their wooden oars, a long blade tied to a piece of wood, are fixed to the gunwale, in rowlocks formed of a pin of wood, and on this they roll over and back each time, a clumsy but effectual movement. The surrounding view is wondrously beautiful. The green pointed mountains with their sharp edges coming down directly into the lake on one side; the other covered with shrubs and some overhanging trees, under whose sweeping arms we glide to the landing stage, in the lights and shadows of a still glorious afternoon. It sounds but a tame description, and yet in reality it is sublime, and, for some reason hard to discover, it is absolutely different, and because of that much more charming than any other lake I have ever seen.
We begin a long ascent, with a continued view, looking backward, where translucent clouds float down the mountain sides, which are mirrored faithfully in the green waters, and as we plunge into a dense wood of bamboos, we take our last farewell look back at Lake Hakone. It is a stony and steep path, cut in zig-zags through the thick undergrowth where there is no room for the long poles of the chair to turn, so we have to walk. Suddenly we come across a little square village, built round a wooden bath house, where the whole population of invalids are bathing together in the warm mineral spring.
As we ascend, the scene grows wilder. Vegetation decreases, and masses of barren rock appear. The earth is warm and steaming, nor must you leave the path, as these treacherous brown curling scales of earth are only a crumbling upper crust, over the furnace below, and lives have more than once been lost here. The air reeks of sulphurous fumes, a strong overpowering stench. And this curious volcanic scene continues, until we reach the abomination of desolation. Here, standing above, we look far away down into a vast cauldron of steam, that rises up and envelops us in suffocating fumes of sulphur, so strong that, wheezing and coughing, we have to turn backwards to get fresh breath, so dense that we can only dimly see the great masses of rock around us. More often they are not rocks, but clumps of crumbling lava, loosely welded together in fantastic shapes, and that take the most wonderfully bright colours from the surrounding mineral substances, of orange, carmine, blue, madder and brown. In one place there is a little stream, in which the sulphur deposit is so thick that there is a rich coating round of green, bright as malachite. The boiling water of many streams swells the vapour that rises from this fitly-named Ojigoku, or Big Hell.
We scramble and grope our way down, ever deeper into this apparently bottomless pit, into this boiling smoking abyss, where the evil-smelling fumes wrap us round so effectually that we can scarcely trace our path, and choking and blinded, we wonder vaguely, if we shall ever emerge into light and air once more. But after we have made a long and devious descent, we branch off to the left, and when we feel ourselves in comparative safety, and in a clearer atmosphere, we turn round to look back to see the wreathing masses of smoke that eternally ascend from this hell. And there, behind this blank desolation, rises at the head of the valley the graceful acute peak of Kammurigatake, with the dense green forests covering it from top to bottom, formed by a thick undergrowth of small box and andromeda japonica. It reminds us of the hot springs of New Zealand, of those beautiful pink and white terraces, which, alas! are no more, where mingling as here with volcanic rocks and steam, there is the additional charm of a luxuriant wealth of semi-tropical vegetation.
We have a very long descent to make, over the roughest path of loose rock and stones, and across several streams, where the obliging coolie makes a bridge of his back, and when we have nearly reached the bottom and made the circuit of the valley on the path cut out midway on the mountain side, we pass round into another valley with wide amphitheatre of mountains. It is through the midst of these, at the end of a long vista formed by their green slopes, that we see the smooth waters of the Pacific, spread out like a looking-glass in the closing afternoon light, and beautiful as had been the views and scenery all day, I think this glimpse of sea and mountains exceeded all. A long winding descent to Miyanoshita in the dusk, which we reach just as they were sending out two messengers with lanterns, to light us home.
Friday, October 3rd.—We went up Sengeuyama, the wooded hill, 1000 feet above, and at the back of the hotel, carried in a kagos or Chinese chair, a most luxurious way of ascending a mountain. It was a glorious morning, with not a cloud in the sky; one of those days when you feel that everything is beautiful, and the views of the mountains at every zig-zag changing and appearing more and more splendid, as at each turn we rise more on a level with them. And then those beautiful thickets of bamboos, the trees of delicately-pointed maple leaves, the laurels and evergreens, the azaleas and hibiscus, the creepers and tendrils, the great clumps of red spiky wild lotus, of purple everlastings, of blue lupus, and yellow snapdragon all growing in wild confusion, fresh with the morning's dew.
There is a little tea-house hung with flags on the platform at the top, and such a view over Odiwara Bay, and of the panorama of mountains with their smooth, pale-green slopes, and there, between those two peaks, in the gap, we ought to get a view of Fujiyama, only, as she so often does, she is hiding herself to-day behind the clouds. No sooner do we reach the bottom than we have to leave Miyanoshita for Yumoto, with a parting pang of regret that our stay is so short. The Fujiya Hotel, though kept by a Japanese, is most comfortable, with excellent mineral baths, which never seem so pleasant as after a long day's excursion, nor must I forget to mention the little Japanese waiting damsels, who giggle and waddle about in their tightly-drawn kimonos, struggling with the details of the French ménu.
We speed quickly down the magnificent mountain road, which we came up before in the dark. It is cut out from the cliff, and has those glorious views, growing grander as we descend into the valley of the mountain, views that make Miyanoshita the most charming of mountain resorts. Even when we get into the tramway at Yumoto, and travel along the plain, there is such a pretty picture of the sea-shore, where the sea looks as green as a lagoon at Venice. We pass again through the long-continued street of villages, where the high thatched roofs are crowned at the top with a cage of poles, on which tufts of grass are growing, and through the blinds of bamboo canes catch glimpses of the washing, the eating, the hairdressing, and the cooking, the every-day busy life of the little people inside. We take the train from Kōzu to Nagoya.