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a blue colour and shaped like an egg, which shines at night. 
They worship this, and call it Antikokusan. The shining 
smoke on the top of this mountain has three colours, which can 
be seen from a distance of three miles ; these three colours are 
blue, yellow, and red. 5 
On the morning after reaching Bojo we started off to ascend 
the central peak of Asosan. After a climb of about 200 feet 
we turned round to look at the crater which we were leaving. 
At our feet was a cultivated plain dotted over with clumps of 
trees and villages, beyond which there was a line of fir-trees 
and Cryptomeria. These formed a belt round the foot of the 
amphitheatre of perpendicular cliffs which intercepted any fur- 
ther view. Before us, but on the left, there was a rugged peak 
called Nekodake, a portion of which looked very like a ruined 
crater. To the right and to the left of us was a wide expanse 
of sloping ground covered with brown grass. When we were 
400 feet above Bojo we came to patches of snow. As we neared 
the top we crossed one or tw T o old lava streams and beds of 
ashes. At the height of about 2000 feet above our starting- 
point, or about 3600 feet above the sea, we were on a level with 
the upper crater of Asosan, a huge black pit which was giving 
off vast clouds of steam. All the rocks which I saw up to this 
point were andesites, similar to those which form the ring- wall 
of the outer crater. Here we found one or two men who were 
engaged in collecting sulphur. Upon our right there was a 
rounded hill called Dobindake, which rose almost 500 feet 
above the level of the crater. The extreme height, therefore, 
of Asosan above the sea-level is perhaps a little over 5000 feet. 
From this position we had a good view of the big crater which 
surrounded us, as the slope on its outside is generally so gentle 
that it looked like a huge pit with perpendicular sides which had 
been dug out of the top part of a piece of ground in shape like 
an inverted saucer. On the northern side the cliffs which bound 
this pit are almost everywhere perpendicular ; but on the south 
side, which was the side towards which we descended, they 
were more worn away to form rugged hills. The cliff-like 
character, with its horizontally- stratified structure, could, how- 
ever, be in many places distinctly traced. That night, foot-sore 
and tired, we reached a village called Kurokawa. The only 
lodgings we could find were in a school-house, where, after a 
supper of biscuits, we shivered all night, lying upon the boards 
with our top- coats to cover us, our arms for pillows, and the 
thermometer somewhere below zero. 
Next day we left the crater, passing through a breach in 
its north-west side. It is through this opening that the Shiro- 
kawa flows, the river which with its tributaries drains the crater 
plain. 
