IV

Though drenched with perspiration by the exertion of the first climb, I

am already dry, and cold.... Up again.... The ascent is at first through

ashes and sand as before; but presently large stones begin to mingle

with the sand; and the way is always growing steeper.... I constantly

slip. There is nothing firm, nothing resisting to stand upon: loose

stones and cinders roll down at every step.... If a big lava-block were

to detach itself from above!... In spite of my helpers and of the staff,

I continually slip, and am all in perspiration again. Almost every stone

that I tread upon turns under me. How is it that no stone ever turns

under the feet of the gōriki? _They_ never slip,--never make a false

step,--never seem less at ease than they would be in walking over a

matted floor. Their small brown broad feet always poise upon the shingle

at exactly the right angle. They are heavier men than I; but they move

lightly as birds.... Now I have to stop for rest every half-a-dozen

steps.... The line of broken straw sandals follows the zigzags we

take.... At last--at last another door in the face of the mountain.

Enter the fourth station, and fling myself down upon the mats. Time,

10:30 a. m. Height, only 7,937 feet;--yet it seemed such a distance!

* * * * *

Off again.... Way worse and worse.... Feel a new distress due to the

rarefaction of the air. Heart beating as in a high fever.... Slope

has become very rough. It is no longer soft ashes and sand mixed

with stones, but stones only,--fragments of lava, lumps of pumice,

scoriæ of every sort, all angled as if freshly broken with a hammer.

All would likewise seem to have been expressly shaped so as to turn

upside-down when trodden upon. Yet I must confess that they never

turn under the feet of the gōriki.... The cast-off sandals strew the

slope in ever-increasing numbers.... But for the gōriki I should have

had ever so many bad tumbles: they cannot prevent me from slipping;

but they never allow me to fall. Evidently I am not fitted to climb

mountains.... Height, 8,659 feet--but the fifth station is shut up! Must

keep zigzaging on to the next. Wonder how I shall ever be able to reach

it!... And there are people still alive who have climbed Fuji three and

four times, _for pleasure_!... Dare not look back. See nothing but the

black stones always turning under me, and the bronzed feet of those

marvellous gōriki who never slip, never pant, and never perspire....

Staff begins to hurt my hand.... Gōriki push and pull: it is shameful of

me, I know, to give them so much trouble.... Ah! sixth station!--may all

the myriads of the gods bless my gōriki! Time, 2:07 p. m. Height, 9,317

feet.

* * * * *

Resting, I gaze through the doorway at the abyss below. The land is now

dimly visible only through rents in a prodigious wilderness of white

clouds; and within these rents everything looks almost black.... The

horizon has risen frightfully,--has expanded monstrously.... My gōriki

warn me that the summit is still miles away. I have been too slow. We

must hasten upward.

* * * * *

Certainly the zigzag is steeper than before.... With the stones now

mingle angular rocks; and we sometimes have to flank queer black bulks

that look like basalt.... On the right rises, out of sight, a jagged

black hideous ridge,--an ancient lava-stream. The line of the left slope

still shoots up, straight as a bow-string.... Wonder if the way will

become any steeper;--doubt whether it can possibly become any rougher.

Rocks dislodged by my feet roll down soundlessly;--I am afraid to look

after them. Their noiseless vanishing gives me a sensation like the

sensation of falling in dreams....

* * * * *

There is a white gleam overhead--the lowermost verge of an immense

stretch of snow.... Now we are skirting a snow-filled gully,--the

lowermost of those white patches which, at first sight of the summit

this morning, seemed scarcely an inch long. It will take an hour to pass

it.... A guide runs forward, while I rest upon my staff, and returns

with a large ball of snow. What curious snow! Not flaky, soft, white

snow, but a mass of transparent globules,--exactly like glass beads. I

eat some, and find it deliciously refreshing.... The seventh station is

closed. How shall I get to the eighth?... Happily, breathing has become

less difficult.... The wind is upon us again, and black dust with it.

The gōriki keep close to me, and advance with caution.... I have to stop

for rest at every turn on the path;--cannot talk for weariness.... I do

not feel;--I am much too tired to feel.... How I managed it, I do not

know;--but I have actually got to the eighth station! Not for a thousand

millions of dollars will I go one step further to-day. Time, 4:40 p. m.

Height, 10,693 feet.

V

It is much too cold here for rest without winter clothing; and now I

learn the worth of the heavy robes provided by the guides. The robes

are blue, with big white Chinese characters on the back, and are padded

thickly as bedquilts; but they feel light; for the air is really like

the frosty breath of February.... A meal is preparing;--I notice that

charcoal at this elevation acts in a refractory manner, and that a

fire can be maintained only by constant attention.... Cold and fatigue

sharpen appetite: we consume a surprising quantity of _Zō-sui_,--rice

boiled with eggs and a little meat. By reason of my fatigue and of the

hour, it has been decided to remain here for the night.

* * * * *

Tired as I am, I cannot but limp to the doorway to contemplate the

amazing prospect. From within a few feet of the threshold, the ghastly

slope of rocks and cinders drops down into a prodigious disk of clouds

miles beneath us,--clouds of countless forms, but mostly wreathings

and fluffy pilings;--and the whole huddling mass, reaching almost

to the horizon, is blinding white under the sun. (By the Japanese,

this tremendous cloud-expanse is well named _Wata-no-Umi_, “the Sea

of Cotton.”) The horizon itself--enormously risen, phantasmally

expanded--seems halfway up above the world: a wide luminous belt ringing

the hollow vision. Hollow, I call it, because extreme distances below

the sky-line are sky-colored and vague,--so that the impression you

receive is not of being on a point under a vault, but of being upon a

point rising into a stupendous blue sphere, of which this huge horizon

would represent the equatorial zone. To turn away from such a spectacle

is not possible. I watch and watch until the dropping sun changes the

colors,--turning the Sea of Cotton into a Fleece of Gold. Half-round

the horizon a yellow glory grows and burns. Here and there beneath it,

through cloudrifts, colored vaguenesses define: I now see golden water,

with long purple headlands reaching into it, with ranges of violet peaks

thronging behind it;--these glimpses curiously resembling portions of a

tinted topographical map. Yet most of the landscape is pure delusion.

Even my guides, with their long experience and their eagle-sight, can

scarcely distinguish the real from the unreal;--for the blue and

purple and violet clouds moving under the Golden Fleece, exactly mock

the outlines and the tones of distant peaks and capes: you can detect

what is vapor only by its slowly shifting shape.... Brighter and

brighter glows the gold. Shadows come from the west,--shadows flung by

cloud-pile over cloud-pile; and these, like evening shadows upon snow,

are violaceous blue.... Then orange-tones appear in the horizon; then

smouldering crimson. And now the greater part of the Fleece of Gold has

changed to cotton again,--white cotton mixed with pink.... Stars thrill

out. The cloud-waste uniformly whitens;--thickening and packing to the

horizon. The west glooms. Night rises; and all things darken except that

wondrous unbroken world-round of white,--the Sea of Cotton.

* * * * *

The station-keeper lights his lamps, kindles a fire of twigs, prepares

our beds. Outside it is bitterly cold, and, with the fall of night,

becoming colder. Still I cannot turn away from that astounding

vision.... Countless stars now flicker and shiver in the blue-black sky.

Nothing whatever of the material world remains visible, except the

black slope of the peak before my feet. The enormous cloud-disk below

continues white; but to all appearance it has become a liquidly level

white, without forms,--a white flood. It is no longer the Sea of Cotton.

It is a Sea of Milk, the Cosmic Sea of ancient Indian legend,--and

always self-luminous, as with ghostly quickenings.