Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/194

 cinders cut through boot-soles so quickly that foreigners tie on these waraji to protect their shoes, allowing eight pairs of the queer galoshes for the ascent and descent of Fuji. From Umagayeshi, the path goes up through woods and stunted underbrush and on over bare cinder and lava, pursuing the even slope of the mountain without dip or zigzag to break the steady climb. Three small Shinto temples in the woods invite pilgrims to pray, pay tribute, and have their staff and garments marked with a sacred seal. Beyond these temples, ten rest-houses, or stations, stand at even distances along the path, the first, or number one, at the edge of the woods, and the tenth at the summit. Priests and station-keepers open their season late in June, before the snow is gone, and close in September. In the midsummer weeks the whole mountain-side is musical with the tinkling bells and staffs of lines of white-clad pilgrims. Notwithstanding their picturesqueness, these devotees are objectionable companions, as they fill tea-houses and mountain stations, devour everything eatable, like swarms of locusts, and bear about with them certain smaller pilgrims that make life a burden to him who follows after. Nearly thirty thousand pilgrims annually ascend Fujiyama. These pious palmers are chiefly from the agricultural class, and they form mutual pilgrimage associations, paying small annual dues, from the sum of which each member in turn has his expenses defrayed. They travel in groups, each man furnished with his bit of straw matting for bed, rain coat, or shelter. They carry, also, cotton towels marked with the crest of their pilgrim society, to be hung, after using, at temple water-tanks, or as advertisements of their presence at the tea-houses which they patronize. At each new shrine they visit the priests stamp their white clothing with the red seal of the temple.

Fujiyama is invested with legends, which these 178