It was a gigantic slide, but we brought up at last on a ridge of grey rock, over which we had to climb carefully, for it was full of holes. On the other side of this ridge the degenerate green weeds had grown into degenerate green plants; and after a few more slides and climbs the plants became bushes, stunted and miserable, but bushes, and we came out on to a sort of natural grass platform, before the rest-house of No. 4, Yoshida side. It was dirty, the first dirty house I had ever seen in Japan. Below us, as though stopped short by a word of command, “Thus far and no further,” were the trees; the tops of the nearest were on a level with the platform, but not one grew upon it. With the cinder-slope behind us we stepped off the grass platform straight into the forest. It was a beautiful forest. First firs, and then, as we went downwards, green trees, small oaks and cryptomerias of all kinds. To feet weary of ballast-heaps, the forest footpath was a rest refreshing, and the delight of growing trees and green fresh leaves after _waraji_ and cinders, an enchantment. But Fuji had not finished his surprises or his trials. Soon the pathway disappeared from under our feet, and only the roots of the trees remained. On these we had to walk, and they were slippery, knotted, and far apart, and full of tangled holes that caught and tripped the feet. A polite Japanese student came and walked with us a little way “to improve his English,” but his feet in their _waraji_ stepped over the tree-roots faster than ours in our boots, and we were soon left alone again. Gradually, as we went downwards, the forest altered from the austere wood of the mountain to the rich luxuriant wood of the plains, green with moss, covered with creepers, dripping with big juicy drops of water as though rich sap were oozing from every vein. All through the wood there were tiny tea-houses, set under a tree and lost among the branches. We passed No. 1 at least seven times, each time certain that it really must be the real original No. 1, and that the “horse-turn-back” station, where we could get a _basha_ to carry us to Yoshida, was necessarily “the next.” After the weary sliding down that abrupt slope, the muscles of one’s legs were all trembling with the strain, and the tree-roots, slippery and uncertain, became doubly difficult. We were still going down so steeply that the hollow of the pathway lay like a green chimney below us. Slowly up through this living funnel came the pilgrim’s chant. “We are going,” and the little bells clashed out triumphant--“we are going to the top.” Then the deep sing-song of the chorus, coming nearer with each syllable, grew louder: “Top ... the top ... to the top.” We waited while the chant coming up from the green depths below came nearer, came past us, went on. From the green heights above it sounded down. “We are going,” and the tiny cymbals clashed--“we are going to the top.”