Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/192

 wheel with vegetable wax. Exquisite mosaics of a hundred broken patterns amaze one with their nicety of finish and cheapness, and no one escapes from the village without buying.

Guides and coolies had been engaged for us at Miyanoshita, and at six o’clock, on the morning after our arrival, the three kagos of the ladies were carried out, and the four cavaliers, the two boys, and six baggage coolies followed. The broad path zigzagged upward to the narrow, knife-edge ride of the mountain range known as the O Tomi Toge pass. From its summit we looked back along the checkered green valley to Miyanoshita and Hakone Lake, with the Emperor's island palace. Looking forward across a checkered plain, we saw Fujiyama rise straight before us, its obstinate head still hidden in clouds. Dropping quickly to the level of the plain, we reached Gotemba, and, changing to jinrikishas, were whirled away to Subashiri, six miles distant.

Trains of descending pilgrims and farmers, perched high on the backs of pack-horses, smiled cheerfully at the procession of foreigners bound for Fuji, and at each rest-house on the way women and children, petrified with astonishment, stood staring at us. Black cinders and blocks of lava announced the nearness of the volcano, and the road became an inky trail of coal-dust through green fields. Banks of scoriæ, like the heaps of coal-dust around collieries, cropped out by the road-side, and the wheels ground noisily through the loose, coarse slag. The whole of Subashiri, crowding the picturesque street of a typical Japanese village, welcomed us. In the stream of running water, on either side of the broad highway danced, whirled, and spouted a legion of mechanical toys, some for the children's pleasure, and others turning the fly-brushes hung over counters of cakes and sweetmeats. The place looks in perpetual fete, with the hundreds of pilgrim flags and towels 176