Once inside the wicket the path, beaten wide here, ran between a breast-high wall of lava which, built like a rampart on the edge of Fuji, hid the sheer sides of the mountain and a row of low wooden huts, the rest-houses--ran between these and on, up to where the black edge of the crater, like the rim of a broken cup, cut the sky in sharp clear lines. For the moment it was fine, and leaving our luggage in one of the huts we hurried on, past the rest-houses, on past the rampart wall, on along the little beaten track which still led steeply upwards. Then sharply it turned, and we stood wedged within a crack in the crater wall, with the sharp black rim rising high on either hand. We were alone on Fuji’s side, before his altar. And there was no sound. In a stillness as of death the vast crater stretched 800 feet below, and the grey ash-dust gathering through two centuries lay thick and smooth as sand upon the shore. Steeply the cinder-walls rose up, rose round, and held the ash. Only in front of us, across half a mile of silent dust, a wide crack in the cup-like rim showed two tall poles and many floating banners, there where the temple’s wicket crossed the pathway from Gotemba. Grey ash and cinder, that was Fuji San. Once a mighty fire, a fire two and a half miles round, with 13,000 feet of cinders, and a bed of ash 2000 feet across. And now, dying or asleep, rigid as death, grown grey and cold, but yet mighty as the sea, powerful as the storm; Nature’s eternal force made visible. And that still life which rolls around our human incompleteness, mysterious and unknown, drew near. Almost it seemed as though we touched the force without, the unresting naked flame of being which threads through the spheres. Almost we touched--but saw only the corpse of Life, for Nature keeps her secrets.... * * * * * In a silence as of death, the vast still crater stretched for a circle of two miles, and the grey ash-dust gathering through two centuries lay thick and smooth--the pall of a mighty God. Steeply the cindery walls rose up, rose round in jagged points like the rim of a broken cup, and into the crack there came two white-clad pilgrims. They knelt bareheaded on the edge of the crater, looking down, and the murmured sing-song of their prayers broke the silence. Old and grizzled, their bullet-heads were bent before the altar in a Faith reverent and sincere. Truly the might of God had dwelt on Fuji; the breath of Eternal Life had rested here--rested and passed, or was passing; and the pilgrim in his faith holds sacred the print of that footstep. He prays to that part of the Godhead incarnate in Fuji--Fuji so perfect in his grace, so stirring in his strength.