Jinrikisha Days in Japan
straight upward. A seam of hard lava soon gave us secure foothold, but presently became a net-work of tiny cascades. My cheerful little coolie, in his saturated cotton suit, tried to encourage me, and passing the rope around a horn of lava at one breathing-stop, pointed upward, and assured me that there was clear sunshine above. Glancing along the sloping lava-track, we saw a foaming crest of water descending from those sunny up lands, and had barely time to cross its path before the roaring stream came on and cut off retreat.
After two hours of hard climbing in the blinding rain and driving wind, we reached the shelter of Station Number Eight, chilled and exhausted. This hut, a log-cabin faced with huge lava blocks, its low roof held down by many bowlders, and its walls five feet in thickness, consists of one room about twelve by thirty feet in size. Two doors looked sheer down the precipitous mountain-slope, and a deep window, like that of a fortress, was set in the end wall. The square fireplace, sunken in the floor, had its big copper kettle swinging from a crane, and the usual stone frame for the rice-kettle. When the doors were barred and braced with planks against the fury of the storm, the smoke, unable to escape, nearly blinded us. Our dripping garments and the coolies’ wet cotton clothes were hung to dry on the rafters over the fireplace, where they slowly dripped. The master of Number Eight had opened his rest-house only five days before, and with his young son and two servants found himself called on to provide for us with our retinue of seventeen servants, for four young cadets from the naval college in Tokio, storm-bound on their way down the mountain, and a dozen pilgrims—forty-two people in all.
Warmed, and comforted with a stray sandwich, we were glad enough to go to bed. Each of us received two futons, one of which made the mattress and the
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