Above the seventh station the path turns to the left and passes behind Hoei-zan; already bands of pilgrims, who had seen the sunrise from the summit, were making their way back towards Gotemba, going at a great pace down the glissade of loose sand and ashes on its side, while we toiled on over harder cinders, with an occasional ridge of lava, on the upward path. At this altitude the knotweed and thistles had disappeared, and the only plants I saw were a dwarf sedge and a little starwort in some of the sheltered nooks; higher still only a few lichens and mosses can grow; there is no regular alpine flora on Fuji.
[Illustration: FUJI FROM THE KAWAGUCHI LAKE]
A big gully full of snow lies just below Number Eight, and from this point the ascent is steeper than ever, winding among a chaos of shapeless blocks of lava; a sharp spur on our left crowned with them made a most curious outline against the sky. In front of us was a strange pilgrim, an old and feeble Buddhist priest in canonicals and a big cane hat; two coolies were hauling him by a cord round his waist, and another was pushing from behind, and even with this help he had to stop every few minutes to get his wind. He smiled a sickly smile as we went by; he was even slower than we were, and it seemed cruel to pass him; but he got to the top finally.
A sharp pull up a rocky gully at last brought us to a little wooden torii, and to the “Famous Silver Water,” a clear, cold spring on the edge of the crater. The supply is not large, and the priest in charge of the enclosure doles it out to pilgrims at the rate of one brass cash for a small teacupful. The principal temple, and the cluster of huts round it, form a little square on the south side of the crater, just at the top of the Mura-yama path, and are reached from the Silver Water by means of a couple of ladders and a small fee. At the top of the ladders there is a tiny shrine, serving as stable to a toy model of a horse, and in front of this the coppers are deposited. There are only three entrances to the crater of Fuji, and each of these is marked by a small torii, the sacred gateway of the Shinto religion; two of them I have already mentioned, the third is on the north side, where the paths from Yoshida and Subashiri, which meet at Number Eight station, reach the summit.