"The original cone of the mountain," he continues, "had been truncated
at an acute angle to its axis. From our very feet a precipitous mud
slope falls away for half a mile or more till it reaches the level. At
our right, still below us, rises a mud wall a mile long, also sloping
down to the level, and behind it is evidently the crater; but before us,
for five miles in a straight line, and on each side nearly as far, is
a sea of congealed mud, broken up into ripples and waves and great
billows, and bearing upon its bosom a thousand huge boulders, weighing
hundreds of tons apiece."
On reaching the crater he found it to resemble a gigantic cauldron,
fully a mile in width, and enclosed with precipitous walls of indurated
mud. From several orifices volumes of steam rose into the air, and when
the vapor cleared away for a moment glimpses of a mass of boiling mud
were obtained. Before the eruption the mountain top had terminated in
three peaks. Of these the highest had an elevation of about 5,800 feet.
The peak destroyed was the middle one, which was rather smaller than the
other two.
"The explosion was caused by steam; there was neither fire nor lava of
any kind. It was, in fact, nothing more nor less than a gigantic boiler
explosion. The whole top and one side of Sho-Bandai-san had been blown
into the air in a lateral direction, and the earth of the mountain was
converted by the escaping steam, at the moment of the explosion, into
boiling mud, part of which was projected into the air to fall at a long
distance, and then take the form of an overflowing river, which rushed
with vast rapidity and covered the country to a depth of from 20 to 150
feet.
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