Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/184

 Lake Chiuzenji, which, however, appears only in glimpses of placid blue through the dense forest, all stillness, coolness, and enchantment. Then it emerges at the head of the lake in a grove of pine-trees sheltering a rustic tea-house, which overlooks the bit of low beach known as the Iris Strand, and all the grand amphitheatre of mountains walling in Chiuzenji. Farther on are Hell's River and the Dragon Head cascade, where a mountain stream slides in many a separate ribbon down mossy ledges. Thence the foot-path climbs to a high plain covered with tall grasses and groves of lofty pines—the famous Red Plain, dyed once with the blood of a conquered army, and tinged with each autumn's frost to the same deep hue again. From the border of this plain rise sombre mountains, Nantaisan a giant among them, with green and purple veils of shadows and a crown of floating clouds. No sign of habitation or cultivation marks the high plain, which, with its loneliness and its scattered pines, is so much like the valleys of the high Sierras. Everywhere else in Japan the country is wooded and shaded and cultivated from water's edge to mountain-top; but in winter all the region above Nikko is deserted, and deep snows in the passes shut it off from the rest of the world. Tea-houses close, the people flee to the valley for warmth, and only the coming of spring and the tourist restores it again. Even those wizards, the Japanese farmers, do not attempt to subdue these solitudes, whose wild beauty delights the whole people.

Beyond this lonely plain the way climbs seven hundred feet along the face of a precipitous hill to the level of Yumoto Lake, which there narrows to a few feet and slips down the rocks, a mass of foam, spray, and steam. The lake—small, uneven, walled by perpendicular mountain-slopes and forests—is a still mirror of these superb heights, one of which, Shirane-san, is a slumbering volcano. Vaporous sulphur springs bubble through the hot 168