The last
of these was in 1707, at which time the whole summit burst into flames.
Rocks were split and shattered by the heat, and stones fell to the depth
of several inches in Yeddo (now Tokyo), sixty miles away. At present
there are in its crater, which has a depth of 700 or 800 feet, neither
sulphurous exhalations nor steam. According to Japanese tradition this
great peak was upheaved in a single night from the bottom of the sea,
more than twenty-one hundred years ago.
Nothing can be more majestic than this volcano, extinct though it be,
rising in an immense cone from the plain to the height of over twelve
thousand feet, truncated at the top, and with its peak almost always
snow-covered. Its ascent is not difficult to an expert climber, and has
frequently been made. From its summit is unfolded a panorama beyond
the power of words to describe, and probably the most remarkable on the
globe. Mountains, valleys, lakes, forests and the villages of thirteen
counties may be seen. As we gaze upon its beautifully shaped and lofty
mass, visible even from Yokohama and a hundred miles at sea, one does
not wonder that it should be regarded as a holy mountain, and that it
should form a conspicuous object in every Japanese work of art. It is
to the natives of Japan as Mont Blanc is to Europeans, the "monarch of
mountains."
In summer pilgrimages are made around the base of the summit elevation,
and there are on the upward path a number of Buddhist temples and
shrines, made of blocks of stone, for devotion, shelter and the storage
of food for pilgrims.
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