Sierra Club Bulletin. 



Then we heard two owls hooting one to the other among 

 the trees that rose in order down the mountain-side. 

 We heard them, but we could not see them. Then my 

 guide began one of those interminable native songs which 

 start on a high-pitched note, drop to a note below, and 

 then resume on the high note in a long drawn-out quaver. 

 The other guides joined in at intervals, and the moun- 

 tains repeated the refrain over and over again. 



Suddenly the horses of their own accord turned from 

 the road and plunged into a thicket. Thinking at first 

 that they had been frightened, we tried to head them 

 about, but finding that they understood their own business 

 better than we did we let them take their way. Soon 

 we were scrambling in single file up a steep, rough 

 path that led to the shelter of our halting-place. 



On the western side of Asama and about three thou- 

 sand feet below its summit is a smaller mound, some five- 

 hundred feet in height, known by the name of Ko- 

 Asama, which means that it is an excrescence upon 

 Asama. Between this smaller mountain and the greater 

 there is a pretty little valley, in which grow trees and 

 grass. And here before climbing, in the half-light of 

 the lanterns, amid the shadows of the moving branches, 

 we made a fire and took our midnight meal. 



After we leave the valley there is no longer any tree 

 or shrub of any kind — nothing but the stretches of barren 

 lava, red and yellow, sometimes rough and irregular, 

 like the clinkers from a coal furnace, sometimes broken 

 off and leaving sharp edges. The first five hundred feet 

 above the valley is known to mountain-climbers in 

 Japan by the suggestive name of "Hard Scramble." 

 In some places the path is almost precipitous. In other 

 places the lava is loose and dried to a fine powder, so 

 that the climber slips backward almost as much as he 

 advances and is choked with dust. Happily for us there 

 had been a heavy rain only the day before, so that, step- 

 ping carefully, we found the lava much firmer to our 

 tread than is usual. 



