Japan and the Japanese

S66 JAPAN. A. D. 1691.
its rise and name, towers in a conical form above all the surround-
ing hills, and is seen at a great distance. It is quite barren, no
plants growing on it.* It is ascended for the worship of the Japanese
god of the winds, to whom the Jamabo, or mountain priests,
are consecrated, and who frequently repeat the words Fusi Jama.
in discoursing or begging. It takes three days to ascend this moun-
tain; but the descent can be made, so Kampfer was told, in three
hours, by the help of sledges of reeds or straw, tied about the waist,
by means of which one may glide down over the snow in winter
and the sand in summer, it being surprisingly smooth and even.
Japanese poets cannot find words, Kampfer tells us, nor Japanese
painters colors, in which to represent this mountain as they think
it deserves.
Our travellers kept on this day and the next (Sunday, March
11) through the mountainous country of Facone, which runs out
southward from the broad peninsula of IDSU. At a village, hemmed
in between a lake and a mountain, the lake itself surrounded in
every other direction by mountains not to be climbed, was a narrow
pass another imperial searching-place, where all persons travelling
to, and especially from, Jedo, must submit to a rigorous exam
ination. Upon the shore of this lake were five small wooden chapels,
and in each a priest seated, beating a gong and howling a
nimada. " All the Japanese foot-travellers of our retinue," says
Kampfer, " threw them some kasses into the chapel, and in return
received each a paper, which they carried, bareheaded, with great
respect, to the shore, in order to throw it into the lake, having first
tied a stone to it. that it might be sure to go to the bottom ; which
they believe is the purgatory for children who die before seven
years of age. They are told so by their priests, who, for their comfort,
assure them that as soon as the water washes off the names
and characters of the gods and saints, written upon the papers above
*
Fusi-no-jama, in tlie province of Seruga, on the borders of Kiu, is an
enormous pyramid, generally covered with snow, detached from and south-
erly of the great central chain of Jipon. It is the largest and most noted
of the volcanoes of Japan In the year 1707 there was an irruption from
it which covered all the neighborhood with masses of rock, red-hot sand and
ashes, which latter fell, even in Jedo, some inches deep. Klaproth (from
Japanese authorities) in Asiatic Journal, vol. xxxii.