The Mountaineer 49 
us. We were on the top of a most uncertain voleano which 
behaved most strangely. I was full of a complexity of weird 
feelings mingled with those of utter helplessness and danger. 
All the surroundines were dark and fearsome—was it a wonder 
that we slept uneasily and heartily weleomed the day? 
At five in the morning as the dumb, grey, grizzly dawn was 
finding itself out of the blackness in the east, we were awakened 
by another loud explosion and crawled out to see once again 
at close range the magnificent boiling smoke. The rocks this 
time fell back into the hot bed whence they came. We felt 
easier, for we expected to be off that place before the usual 
time for another. There was no sunrise for us and our seant 
breakfast was hastily eaten. Another look was ventured into 
the great pit of the Evil One, but we could see nothing, as the 
steam from his breakfast of sulphur and lava rose in great 
volumes. The wind, too, stinging cold and keenly damp, 
wrapped the clouds in gray, chilly sheets about us, so that we 
were glad to make away from the haunted though enticing 
pinnacle downwards toward the earth whence we had come, it 
seemed, long, lone before. We made fast time getting off that 
voleano, for in an hour and a half we were at the base of 
Ko-Asama, mighty glad to be free from the mental tension of 
the night before. Then it was we spread our blankets in the 
gladsome sunshine, ate a bite, and stretched ourselves to sleep. 
A half hour in the jinrickisha followed. Then an hour on 
foot over a very ancient lava flow which was covered by a 
sparse vegetation. This brought us to an ice eave under a 
young lava bed only one hundred twenty years old. The great, 
brown, cavernous mass rose abruptly before us and we 
scrambled, climbed, jumped, and did various goat anties to get 
up and out on the top. The sight we saw was wonderfully 
impressive, for the bed was at least five miles long and two 
miles wide. The formation was jagged and ragged, caved and 
pitted, creviced and ecrannied, tossed and tumbled, browned 
and burnt, scarred and seared, restless and confused. It showed 
under us and all around us unmistakable proofs of a power 
that in its action must have been tremendously and_ stupen- 
dously magnificent. Some vast, awful, fearful, netherworld 
force stirred to wrath had poured its vial of hot, surging lava 
out over a beautiful world, leaving fearful destruction in its 
path. 
