The green has utterly vanished;--all is black. There is no road,--only
the broad waste of black sand sloping and narrowing up to those
dazzling, grinning patches of snow. But there is a track,--a yellowish
track made by thousands and thousands of cast-off sandals of straw
(_waraji_), flung aside by pilgrims. Straw sandals quickly wear out upon
this black grit; and every pilgrim carries several pair for the journey.
Had I to make the ascent alone, I could find the path by following that
wake of broken sandals,--a yellow streak zigzagging up out of sight
across the blackness.
* * * * *
6:40 _a. m._--We reach Tarōbō, first of the ten stations on the
ascent: height, 6000 feet. The station is a large wooden house, of
which two rooms have been fitted up as a shop for the sale of staves,
hats, raincoats, sandals,--everything pilgrims need. I find there a
peripatetic photographer offering for sale photographs of the mountain
which are really very good as well as very cheap.... Here the gōriki
take their first meal; and I rest. The kuruma can go no further; and I
dismiss my three runners, but keep the horse,--a docile and surefooted
creature; for I can venture to ride him up to _Ni-gō-goséki_, or Station
No. 2-1/2.
* * * * *
Start for No. 2-1/2 up the slant of black sand, keeping the horse at a
walk. No. 2-1/2 is shut up for the season.... Slope now becomes steep as
a stairway, and further riding would be dangerous. Alight and make ready
for the climb. Cold wind blowing so strongly that I have to tie on my
hat tightly. One of the gōriki unwinds from about his waist a long stout
cotton girdle, and giving me one end to hold, passes the other over
his shoulder for the pull. Then he proceeds over the sand at an angle,
with a steady short step, and I follow; the other guide keeping closely
behind me to provide against any slip.
* * * * *
There is nothing very difficult about this climbing, except the
weariness of walking through sand and cinders: it is like walking over
dunes.... We mount by zigzags. The sand moves with the wind; and I have
a slightly nervous sense--the feeling only, not the perception; for I
keep my eyes on the sand,--of height growing above depth.... Have to
watch my steps carefully, and to use my staff constantly, as the slant
is now very steep.... We are in a white fog,--passing through clouds!
Even if I wished to look back, I could see nothing through this vapor;
but I have not the least wish to look back. The wind has suddenly
ceased--cut off, perhaps, by a ridge; and there is a silence that I
remember from West Indian days: the Peace of High Places. It is broken
only by the crunching of the ashes beneath our feet. I can distinctly
hear my heart beat.... The guide tells me that I stoop too much,--orders
me to walk upright, and always in stepping to put down the heel first.
I do this, and find it relieving. But climbing through this tiresome
mixture of ashes and sand begins to be trying. I am perspiring and
panting. The guide bids me keep my honorable mouth closed, and breathe
only through my honorable nose.
* * * * *
We are out of the fog again.... All at once I perceive above us, at
a little distance, something like a square hole in the face of the
mountain,--a door! It is the door of the third station,--a wooden hut
half-buried in black drift.... How delightful to squat again,--even in
a blue cloud of wood-smoke and under smoke-blackened rafters! Time, 8:30
a. m. Height, 7,085 feet.
* * * * *
In spite of the wood-smoke the station is comfortable enough inside;
there are clean mattings and even kneeling-cushions. No windows,
of course, nor any other opening than the door; for the building
is half-buried in the flank of the mountain. We lunch.... The
station-keeper tells us that recently a student walked from Gotemba to
the top of the mountain and back again--in geta! Geta are heavy wooden
sandals, or clogs, held to the foot only by a thong passing between the
great and the second toe. The feet of that student must have been made
of steel!
Having rested, I go out to look around. Far below white clouds are
rolling over the landscape in huge fluffy wreaths. Above the hut, and
actually trickling down over it, the sable cone soars to the sky. But
the amazing sight is the line of the monstrous slope to the left,--a
line that now shows no curve whatever, but shoots down below the
clouds, and up to the gods only know where (for I cannot see the end
of it), straight as a tightened bowstring. The right flank is rocky
and broken. But as for the left,--I never dreamed it possible that a
line so absolutely straight and smooth, and extending for so enormous a
distance at such an amazing angle, could exist even in a volcano. That
stupendous pitch gives me a sense of dizziness, and a totally unfamiliar
feeling of wonder. Such regularity appears unnatural, frightful; seems
even artificial,--but artificial upon a superhuman and demoniac scale.
I imagine that to fall thence from above would be to fall for leagues.
Absolutely nothing to take hold of. But the gōriki assure me that there
is no danger on that slope: it is all soft sand.