A NIGHT IN A JAPANESE TEMPLE--UNSUCCESSFUL ATTEMPT TO "KODAK" THE MIKADO--LANDED AMONG THE "HEATHEN CHINEE."
The sun was setting when we left Yoshida, and with our path principally composed of the narrow dikes separating the rice fields, progress was painfully slow. Miyhoji, seven miles away, was our destination for the night. We had an idea that Miyhoji was a village, and so clicked off eight miles before we discovered that we had either passed the town or were on the wrong track. About one mile back we had seen a light and there we returned. We were at Miyhoji, one of the historic old temples of Japan, and there we slept. The priest lived here with his wife and two acolytes, and a cordial welcome it was they gave us. At 5 o'clock on the afternoon of Nov. 20, we entered a forest at the end of Lake Mishi-No-Umi. We had six miles yet to go ere we sighted Shoji Lake and the hotel at that point kept by Y. Hoshino, a naturalized Japanese gentleman, who was born in Scotland, and having lived eighteen years on the islands of Japan, finally became an adopted citizen. Traveling the forests at night in Japan over lava beds with path illumed only by a cycle lamp is not the most pleasant of journeys. The narrow way is uncertain, deep chasms appear upon either side and I had several rocky falls. I was bruised and battered when we came to Hoshino's residence and lost no time in taking to my bed. At daybreak our host called us to view the silent volcano rising in grandeur to the extreme height 12,365 feet. There is not a peak in all the grand elevation of the Rockies that can compare with Fuji. Pike's Peak, taken from its setting of lesser lights, which but serve to destroy its beauty, and placed upon the plains of Illinois, would not even prove a petty rival to the one before us. As we looked upon Fuji that morning a spotless mantle of snow cowled her crest, the scintillations of which formed a halo of prismatic light about her, and it did not seem strange to realize that the natives worshiped this wondrous monument of eruptive power and beauty.
It was our good fortune to be present at the greatest of all "war holidays" held at Shokausha Park in Kudan, on Dec. 15, 16, 17 and 18. After leaving Hoshino's we returned to Tokio, and spent the time in touring the vicinity until these great fetes at which the emperor and empress are always present, were held. Dec. 17, the day upon which His Imperial Majesty Metsu Hito, Emperor of Japan, was to appear at Shokousha Park, dawned dull and threatening, and awakened within us the dread idea that the mightiest of all Japanese would not be on view. At the park the attendance was something incalculable. Tokio seemed to have had its million souls augmented by the thousands of Yokohama, Nikko and other surrounding cities. Our experiences in the vast crowd were paralleled only by those in the dense throng at the World's Fair on Chicago Day. Shortly before 11 o'clock, a tremor ran through the crowd, then a hoarse murmur, and amid a cavalcade of gay lancers, the carriage of the emperor swept through the lane of blue-coated soldiers, and halted directly in front of where we were standing. As the emperor turned and looked about him, I saw a Japanese of low stature, dressed in the uniform of the commander of the army and navy; his dark-complexioned face partly shaded by a peculiar hat, heavily jeweled. The photographs of the Mikado represent him to be a slender man, with a long face, but they are not true likenesses. The Mikado has a round, full face, high intellectual temple, a black mustache which droops over the gentle, pleasing mouth, and with soft eyes, inexpressibly sad, his face appeals to one as that of a man suffering under the royal chains which confine him to the narrow limits of the palace grounds.