Exotics and Retrospectives. Lafcadio Hearn

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. 2½.

      Start for No. 2½ up the slant of black sand, keeping the horse at a walk. No. 2½ 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.

      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