Exotics and Retrospectives — Part 6

I see the gōriki hurrying forward far away,--one of them carrying the eggs round his neck!... Now there are no more trees worthy of the name,--only scattered stunted growths resembling shrubs. The black road curves across a vast grassy down; and here and there I see large black patches in the green surface,--bare spaces of ashes and scoriæ; showing that this thin green skin covers some enormous volcanic deposit of recent date.... As a matter of history, all this district was buried two yards deep in 1707 by an eruption from the side of Fuji. Even in far-off Tōkyō the rain of ashes covered roofs to a depth of sixteen centimetres. There are no farms in this region, because there is little true soil; and there is no water. But volcanic destruction is not eternal destruction; eruptions at last prove fertilizing; and the divine “Princess-who-causes-the-flowers-to-blossom-brightly” will make this waste to smile again in future hundreds of years.

... The black openings in the green surface become more numerous and larger. A few dwarf-shrubs still mingle with the coarse grass.... The vapors are lifting; and Fuji is changing color. It is no longer a glowing blue, but a dead sombre blue. Irregularities previously hidden by rising ground appear in the lower part of the grand curves. One of these to the left,--shaped like a camel’s hump,--represents the focus of the last great eruption.

The land is not now green with black patches, but black with green patches; and the green patches dwindle visibly in the direction of the peak. The shrubby growths have disappeared. The wheels of the kuruma, and the feet of the runners sink deeper into the volcanic sand.... The horse is now attached to the kuruma with ropes, and I am able to advance more rapidly. Still the mountain seems far away; but we are really running up its flank at a height of more than five thousand feet.

Fuji has ceased to be blue of any shade. It is black,--charcoal-black,--a frightful extinct heap of visible ashes and cinders and slaggy lava.... Most of the green has disappeared. Likewise all of the illusion. The tremendous naked black reality,--always becoming more sharply, more grimly, more atrociously defined,--is a stupefaction, a nightmare.... Above--miles above--the snow patches glare and gleam against that blackness,--hideously. I think of a gleam of white teeth I once saw in a skull,--a woman’s skull,--otherwise burnt to a sooty crisp.