Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/196

 the sun rise, from the door-way of that summit rest-house. Our two Colorado mountaineers had faced the slope like chamois, and were leaping the rocks walling the first station, before the female contingent had left the torii. Of the fifteen coolies accompanying us, three were assigned to each woman, with orders to take her to the top if they had to carry her pickaback. After an established Fuji fashion, one coolie went first with a rope fastened around the climber's waist, while another pushed her forward. Aided still further by tall bamboo staffs, we were literally hauled and boosted up the mountain, with only the personal responsibility of lifting our feet out of the ashes.

For the first three or four miles, the path led through a dense, green bower, carpeted with vines, and starred with wild flowers and great patches of wild strawberries. Scaling moss-covered log steps, we passed through temples with gohei, or prayer papers, hanging from the gates and doors, and bare Shinto altars within. At one shrine, the sound of our approaching footsteps was the signal for blasts from a conch-shell horn and thumps on the hanging drum, and the priests, in their purple and white gowns and black pasteboard hats, gave us a cheerful welcome, and many cups of hot barley-tea. At our request, they stamped our clothing with big red characters, the sacred seal or crest of that holy station, and sold us the regulation pilgrim’s staff, branded with the temple mark. The old priest, to dazzle us with his acquirements, and to show his familiarity with foreign customs, glibly placed the price of the alpenstock at “Sen tents.” The forest ended as suddenly as if one had stepped from a door-way, and a sloping dump of bare lava and cinders stretched upward endlessly; the whole cone visible, touched with scudding bits of thin white clouds. Every dike and seam of lava between the forest edge 180