Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/193

 from each tea-house, and at the end of the street is a torii, leading to an ancient temple in a grove, where all Fuji pilgrims pray before beginning the ascent of the mountain. In the light of the afternoon, the double row of thatched houses and the street full of bareheaded villagers looked like a well-painted stage scene. Meanwhile the sun sank, and in the last crimson glow of its fading the clouds rolled away, and Fuji’s stately cone stood over us, its dark slopes turning to rose and violet in the changing light.

We rose with the sun at four o’clock, looked at Fuji, all pink and lilac in the exquisite atmosphere of the morning, snatched a hasty breakfast and set off, the women in their kagos and the men on mettlesome steeds that soon took them out of sight along the broad cindery avenue leading to the base of the slanting mountain. In that clear light Fuji looked twice its twelve thousand feet above the sea, and the thought of toiling on foot up the great slope was depressing. Instead of a fifteen-mile walk, it looked fifty miles at least. All along the forest avenue moss-grown stone posts mark the distance, and at one place are the remains of a stone wall and lantern-guarded gate-way setting the limit of the mountain’s holy ground. From that point the soil is sacred, although horses and kagos are allowed to go a mile farther to a mat-shed station, known as Umagayeshi (Turn Back Horse). Thence the great Fuji sweeps continuously upward, and a tall torii at the head of the stone staircase marks the beginning of the actual ascent, the holy ground on which only sandaled feet may tread.

In the mat-shed the kagos were stored for a two days’ rest, luggage was divided and tied on the backs of the coolies, who were as gayly fringed as Indians on the war-path, with the many pairs of straw sandals tied at their waists and hanging from their packs. The coarse 177