THE great mountain of Japan is well known to us all; its form appears on countless screens and fans, and its foreign name, Fusiyama, is as familiar as Mont Blanc or Pike’s Peak. By the Japanese it is called Fuji, or Fujisan, or sometimes Fuji-noyama when speaking poetically: it is difficult to understand how an s came to be substituted for the j by foreigners, but under any name there is a peculiar fascination about the mountain, and the first sight of it, from the hundred steps in Yokohama, from Ueno in Tokyo through a haze of telephone wires, or across the waves of Suruga Bay from the deck of a steamer, is an event which will be fixed in the traveller’s memory.

I can never see a high place without wishing to be on the top of it, and Fuji looks obtrusively high. The long sweep with which it heaves its twelve thousand feet above the shore, the absence of any competitive mountains, and the exaggerated perspective of its broad base and narrow summit, all add to this impression, and the ambitious soul longs to be on such a superior eminence. And there is no better way of taking a holiday than to climb a mountain. To go down a river leads to laziness; things glide by which look as if they ought to be sketched, but to do so would involve stopping the boat, and interfering with the forces of nature which are gently furthering the traveller’s ends, and thus the mind is tossed to and fro between the delight of seeing things and the unpleasant feeling that it is a duty to work. Thinking is the one thing to be especially avoided on a holiday, and there is too much time for thinking on an ordinary river. The same objection holds against walking on easy roads; in fact, the farther you walk the more you think; but in climbing a really big hill all thought is killed for hours by the simple physical exertion, and you become a mere machine, with a laboriously pumping heart and very heavy legs. And what a sense of superiority comes when the highest point is at last reached, when the world is all below you, half cloud and half solid earth, lovely, mysterious, and absolutely unpaintable. Even this sense fades from me in a few minutes, and I become a nonentity, with only a vague feeling of the hugeness of the universe and the infinitesimal smallness of the individual, and the opening verse of Adam’s morning hymn always comes into my mind, as it did years ago on the top of a Somersetshire hill overlooking the Glastonbury flats, just after my first reading of “Paradise Lost.”

An artist often hears the remark, “You must find painting a great resource,” as if it were an amusement like golf or trout-fishing; and no doubt to many people a landscape-painter’s life seems like one long holiday; but the struggle with ever-changing skies and fast-fading flowers has its fatigues, and the mind gets wearied of constantly thinking how this and that ought to be painted, so when a friend in Yokohama suggested that we should go up Fuji together, I accepted his proposal with alacrity, and we chose the first week in August for our excursion, that being the time when there is the best chance of good weather, and when most pilgrims are to be seen on the mountain. One of the most boring things in life is to walk through new and interesting country with a man who has no eyes for anything but his watch, and who insists on telling you how many minutes the last mile has taken; but my friend’s figure was a sufficient guarantee against any attempt at “record-cutting,”

and I felt sure that his pace would give me plenty of time for looking about.

The weather for our start was not promising—that damp summer heat of which there is so much in Japan, heavy and depressing, shrouding the mountains from morning till night in dense masses of cloud, which seem to slowly drag themselves up from the valley, and never succeed in getting clear of the hill-tops. From Miya-no-shita to the Hakone Lake we were from time to time enveloped in these clouds, and a thin drizzling rain prevented us from enjoying what in fine weather would be a very lovely walk. The moor at the northern end of the lake, Sengoku-hara, is dotted with herds of cattle, and is perhaps the only place in Japan where this familiar sight can be seen. You may wander for miles over the green hills and moorlands which cover so large a portion of its surface without ever seeing a four-footed animal; perhaps because the tall, coarse grasses and the leaves of the dwarf bamboos are unsuitable for fodder; perhaps because the Japanese are not a meat-eating nation, and do not need herds and flocks.

Our intention was to cross this moor, and join the road which leads from Miya-no-shita by way of the Maiden’s Pass, Otome-no-toge, to Gotemba, a village at the foot of Fuji, but our coolie assured us that he knew a shorter road by the Nagao-toge, so we struggled up the hill-side on our left, reached a post which marked the top of the pass, and then stopped in the mist to consider which track we should follow. Suddenly appeared to us an aged man, whose venerable face inspired us with confidence, and by him we were led astray. He took us by the semblance of a path along the hill-top, and for about half an hour we plunged through wet grass up to our necks, the thick white mist hiding everything more than ten yards distant; then he confessed that he had lost his way, that he had heard of that road, but had never taken it before, and that it was all grown over—an obvious fact; so there was nothing to be done but find our way back to the post, and try the wider track from which he had beguiled us. He was a cheerful old soul, seventy-four years of age, who had just walked to some hot springs about twenty miles from his home to take the baths for a couple of days because he suffered from rheumatism. Either it was a very mild case or the baths were marvellously efficacious, for he led us down the hill at a rattling pace, and went five or six miles out of his way to atone for his error, and to put us in the right road for Gotemba.

The mists reached far down the hill, and when we were at last free from them we looked eagerly for Fuji. There was the sea below us, with the great curve of sand, Tago-no-ura, bordering Suruga Bay, and the green slopes rising from it showed where our mountain must be, but at the height of about two thousand feet a straight bank of white cloud ruled off the landscape, and of the summit we could see no sign. The path led us along the hill-side, where men were cutting the rough grass, and loading it on pack-horses; it wandered in and out of the dry gulleys, and over the intervening ridges, and at last, descending to the northward, brought us through cultivated fields to a tea-house near the railway station, where our baggage and provisions were waiting for us. Gotemba is on the Tokaido Railway, and is therefore a much-frequented place during the six weeks or so when Fuji is considered to be “open.” It has been ascended at all seasons, the laborious walking through soft snow being the only difficulty, and the chance of bad weather the only danger; but except from the latter part of July to the beginning of September the numerous rest-houses are unoccupied, and the climber is obliged to carry all provisions with him.

There were plenty of pilgrims about, waiting to start on the morrow or just returned from the mountain, some washing their weary feet, others tying their big hats and long walking-sticks in bundles for the luggage-van, and all chattering incessantly. After dinner a travelling company entertained us in front of our tea-house with songs and dances. The band consisted of two samisen, a bell tapped with a stick, and bamboo castanets. The dancers were all little girls, from ten to fifteen years old, dressed in the ordinary long-sleeved kimono, and the movements of their bodies and slim little hands and limbs were full of grace and variety. Each performance was a mixture of song, dance, and dialogue, with instrumental accompaniment; the music was queer, tuneless, and often harsh to the European ear, but with the blood-stirring quality of all genuine national music.

Before daybreak next morning the whole house was stirring, and it was useless to hope for more sleep. Most of the pilgrims start early in order to get to the top by sunset, sleep there, and descend the following day, but we had decided to sleep two nights on the mountain, and were in no hurry. Our heavier baggage was sent by pack-horse to Yoshida, on the north side of the mountain, and three coolies went with us as guides and porters, carrying some extra clothing and the solid food which seems necessary for European stomachs. In the village street our strolling players were already wandering round, trying with some preliminary chords on the samisen to attract an audience. Daylight did not suit them, they looked draggled and discouraged, and it was difficult to believe that those dirty little figures shuffling along in the mud could ever have had any charm or grace of movement.

The path from Gotemba to the summit is one steady ascent over beds of old ashes. At first it is a very gentle rise; the lanes wind through the fields with various crops,

and past cottages with hedges of pink and white hibiscus; but after a few miles it begins to get steeper, the ashes are less disintegrated, cultivation only appears in isolated spots, and there are large stretches of gray moorland varied only with bushes and wild-flowers. The mist still hung round us, there was no landscape to be seen in any direction, and if it had not been for the flowers and the ever-new and quaint figures on the road, this part of the walk would have been dull. Besides the regular pilgrims there were many men and women leading pack-horses, those on their way up carrying provisions and fuel for the rest-houses, and those coming down bringing bundles of grass so large that they looked like walking hay-stacks, and the wiry little ponies that carried them were almost invisible. In front a misshapen head peeped out, underneath were four thin little legs with enormous feet, and as they passed, their narrow drooping quarters, cat-hammed and cow-hocked, swayed at every step under the heavy load. Japanese drawings of horses have risen in my estimation since I have seen the models the artists have to work from; there never was a more ill-shaped beast than the ordinary horse of the country. In this as in many other hill districts mares only are used; they are shod with big straw over-shoes, which give a finishing touch to their ludicrous shape; under them is slung a square of dark-blue cotton cloth to keep off the flies, and a narrow strip of the same material, with a big crimson cord and tassel printed on it for decoration, is draped across their quarters. Many of the pilgrims ride up as far as the tea-house called Uma-gaeshi (horse send back), and the ponies look almost as much eclipsed under the big pack-saddle with its trappings, and the pilgrim with his, as they do under the loads of grass.

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 Tarobo, 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 Tarobo 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.

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.

Above the seventh station the path turns to the left and passes behind Hoei-zan; already bands of pilgrims, who had seen the sunrise from the summit, were making their way back towards Gotemba, going at a great pace down the glissade of loose sand and ashes on its side, while we toiled on over harder cinders, with an occasional ridge of lava, on the upward path. At this altitude the knotweed and thistles had disappeared, and the only plants I saw were a dwarf sedge and a little starwort in some of the sheltered nooks; higher still only a few lichens and mosses can grow; there is no regular alpine flora on Fuji.

A big gully full of snow lies just below Number Eight, and from this point the ascent is steeper than ever, winding among a chaos of shapeless blocks of lava; a sharp spur on our left crowned with them made a most curious outline against the sky. In front of us was a strange pilgrim, an old and feeble Buddhist priest in canonicals and a big cane hat; two coolies were hauling him by a cord round his waist, and another was pushing from behind, and even with this help he had to stop every few minutes to get his wind. He smiled a sickly smile as we went by; he was even slower than we were, and it seemed cruel to pass him; but he got to the top finally.

A sharp pull up a rocky gully at last brought us to a little wooden torii, and to the “Famous Silver Water,” a clear, cold spring on the edge of the crater. The supply is not large, and the priest in charge of the enclosure doles it out to pilgrims at the rate of one brass cash for a small teacupful. The principal temple, and the cluster of huts round it, form a little square on the south side of the crater, just at the top of the Mura-yama path, and are reached from the Silver Water by means of a couple of ladders and a small fee. At the top of the ladders there is a tiny shrine, serving as stable to a toy model of a horse, and in front of this the coppers are deposited. There are only three entrances to the crater of Fuji, and each of these is marked by a small torii, the sacred gateway of the Shinto religion; two of them I have already mentioned, the third is on the north side, where the paths from Yoshida and Subashiri, which meet at Number Eight station, reach the summit.

Clouds had, as usual, begun to form about mid-day, and there were only occasional peeps of distance, but the crater itself was worthy of the journey, and occupied us until the bitterly cold wind drove us to shelter. Here, as on other mountains, I noticed that the first object of the native is to get under cover; all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them may be spread before his eyes, but if there is a little smoky cabin, however rough and uncomfortable, the professional mountaineer goes inside and stays there. This one was not luxurious; near the doorway, the only aperture for admitting light, there was a smouldering wood-fire, where our food was cooked before we lay down to try and rest on the loose and creaky floor-boards; little blasts came like squirts of cold water through the cracks of the unmortared walls, and it was a relief when a general movement of the sleepers—for a Japanese can apparently sleep anywhere—showed the approach of sunrise.

The morning was clear and bright, and we all crouched in nooks of the rocks, wrapped in our quilts, and gazed at the straight gray line of the Pacific and the gradually brightening line above it, watching for the first sign of the approaching god. On the most prominent rock a priest knelt, waving strips of paper tied to a stick and chanting prayers and eulogies, and soon the sun rose, as he assuredly will every morning, whether he is prayed to or not. There

was such a vast space of mysterious blue sea and distance below the horizon that the big orange ball appeared to be already half-way up the heavens when we first saw it. This daily occurrence seems ever new and wonderful, always has something of the miraculous about it, and to most minds it brings a sense of thankfulness, as the sunset gives that of repose; though why we should feel grateful both that it is time to begin to work and time to leave off is a puzzle to me. My thoughts turned to an early morning near Plevna, and to an honest Turk, who, as the sun rose over the bare Bulgarian hills, turned on his box-seat, and, gravely touching his forehead, wished a good-day to his “little brothers” in the carriage he was driving. There was a mixture of courteousness and solemnity in his manner which seemed exactly suited to the important moment.

When the orange glow had turned to a dazzling glare, we walked round to the foot of Kenga-mine, the highest of the peaks encircling the crater, and looked westward at the shadow of Fuji, a great pyramid of tender blue stretching for miles across the country at its foot, darkening a slice of the sunlit distant mountains, and towering above them into the sky, clearly defined on the light mists and clouds of the horizon. So sharp was the outline that it seemed as if our two shadows ought to show on the distant sky; but though we waved our arms frantically there was no visible movement on the edge; we were too small. When we returned to get some breakfast many of the pilgrims were saying their morning prayers at the little temple. “Sengen Sama” is the goddess of Fuji; a prettier name for her is “Ko no hana saku ya Hime”—“the princess who makes the blossoms of the trees to open.” There is another little temple dedicated to her on the north side of the crater, and many more imposing ones in various parts of Japan. On a banner which floated in front of this second temple there was an inscription in Japanese, and under it these words in English, “Place for worship the Heaven.” I suppose this was an effort in the direction of civilization and rationalism, but I resented it as an attempt to explain away the flower-loving princess, and to dethrone her from the mountain-top where she has been worshipped in peace for so many centuries. Close by the banner is another spring, “The Famous Golden Water,” and a small shed, where bundles of chopsticks and other mementos are sold, and where for ten sen you can buy a tin can full of the famous water to take home to your friends. Most of the descending pilgrims have one or two of these tins slung round them with the rest of their travelling-kit. The regular Fuji pilgrim is dressed in a white tunic with loose sleeves, close-fitting white cotton drawers, white socks and gaiters, and a pair of straw sandals; he wears the usual big hat, which serves as an umbrella, and slung round his shoulders he has a light rush mat, which can be shifted to either side to keep off sun or rain. Round his neck he has a string of beads, a little incessantly tinkling bell, and a few pairs of extra sandals on a cord, and fastened to his waistband is the small package containing his personal baggage; he carries in his hand either the octagonal birch staff or a

longer peeled wand, with some paper tied round the end of it. The dress of the women is the same as that of the men, except that they wear a short petticoat under the tunic, about as long as a Highlander’s kilt. I saw none of them adorned with the bell and beads, so perhaps these are reserved for the men. It is only of late years that women have been allowed to climb the sacred mountain.

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 Tokyo, 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

that on our left soon began to show some vegetation. There were pines and larches, whose dwarfed and twisted forms showed the hardship of their lives, and among them were some flowers too, clusters of a delicate pink rhododendron, crimson wild roses, columbines, clematis, golden-rod, and orange lilies.

The glissade of fine ashes brought us down as far as Number Five station, and there we rejoined the upward path, for no one tries to ascend over this loose stuff. High up in the gully we had seen men digging out snow from under the ashes, and taking it across the flank of the mountain to supply one of the rest-houses on the ridge to our right, and troops of ascending pilgrims were visible now and then as a turn of their path brought them in profile against the sky. Below Number Five there is but one track; it plunges at once into a thick undergrowth of bushes, and after this we had no more desolate wastes of ashes, but a constant succession of trees and flowers, temples, and luxurious rest-houses, gay with the cotton flags presented to them by their patrons. The forest through which this path leads covers a steep ridge of lava; the trees are mostly pine and other conifers, often very fine old specimens, and under them is a tangle of flowering shrubs and plants and of fallen timber. The people we met coming up seemed to appear suddenly under our feet out of the green gloom; one party had always to draw aside while the other passed; at times the path was a stairway of old roots, at others a ditch between high banks, and never wide enough for two to walk abreast. We heard a sound of singing below us, and stood on the bank while about twenty white-clad pilgrims filed by, men of all ages, each with a little bell tinkling at his waist; the front ones chanted a short strain, which those at the back took up and answered, and their song was faintly audible in the woods above us long after the last had disappeared up the winding path. The chant is called “Rokkon shojo”—the six senses purified—the six, according to the Buddhists, being eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and heart, and it is only sung by the Fuji pilgrims.

At Number Two station we made a long halt, emptied the ashes out of our boots, and washed our feet in the tubs of water which the little servants brought us. It was a very different kind of place from the rough shelter on the Gotemba side; the path came down a few steps as it emerged from the wood, passed under a torii by a small temple, and then spread out into quite a wide space in front of a long tea-house crowded with pilgrims. On the opposite side of this space were three or four platforms, spread with blankets and shaded with matting; these too were occupied by groups of guests, who smoked and drank tea as they rested, and below them the tops of the trees were cut away to give a space of open sky and a view of the distance. Hundreds of little flags were fluttering from long bamboo poles, and at the other end of this lively scene the path went down a few more steps, and became again a narrow track through the dense forest. The flowers all the way were abundant and beautiful, constantly varying as we descended from one zone to another; at last the wood became thinner, and we could get glimpses of the distance, and of the grassy ridges on each side of us, tinged with pale mauve by masses of funkia in blossom; and when we reached the temple and the large open square of the Uma-gaeshi we were at the end of the trees, and before us was a great slope of moorland leading down for miles and miles to the pine grove by Yoshida.

There is but one break in the long walk through flowers and grass—a little tea-house called Naka-no-chaya, whose three pine-trees are distinguishable for a long distance across the moor. All round it there are monumental pillars covered

NAKA-NO-CHAYA, ON THE NORTHERN SLOPE