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About The Sunday Oregonian. (Portland, Ore.) 1881-current | View Entire Issue (June 7, 1908)
THE SUNDAY OREGONIAN, PORTLAND, JUNE 7, 1908. ON A PIC'TURESO ANNIE LAURA MILLER., WRITE5 . OF TRIP AROUND THE BASE OF cJAPAN DIG MOUNTAIN Ihh - -hii : , MfUf--0MB I - - - - - 1 xf jj r . . - ' ff94 1 . ' fi 1 A wwwgriwuw 1 1 I B if-''' " ' ' "" 11 1 " " I , " ' " " Jj " S44r! ' - (spr&t i 1 1 I ,i , i i i j j siA 1 V5 ! w- --SC 1 yf4 ; ; r HI U'l: - J: 7gfeV 0 :at v : I J I A fXf I V - v . ... wmy,Xi--..Z?: f : : IB IB l " I E) BY ANNIE LAURA MILLRR. "Off the beaten track." What a potent phrase it is in this tourist-ridden land of Japan, bringing up visions of wildly beau tiful scenery, of country people always courteous, and of old temples hid among evergreens on remote mountain sides all undisturbed by the noise of the outside world. These visions became so strong during the July heat that they lured us away from home for a four days' trip around the base of Fujiyama. The railroad was left behind at Go tern ha. a little mountain town of one street that exists because it Is a favorite starting place for pilgrims who "climb Fuji every year. By the thousands they go, for the mountain is sacred to them and religious pilgrimages are popular. Gotemba in holiday attire with gaily printed hangings and banners flying from the inns, yet wore a deserted look, for it was too early in the morning for the re turn of pilgrims, who wait at the sum mit to pray to the rising sun. In the town we hired a little tramcar, drawn by a raw-boned horse, and were soon on our way. The fat and comfortable peas ant driver sat half of the time in the bucket containing the horse's meal of grass and corn, and the other half, leant against the dashboard frankly ignoring his beast and gazing with fixed eyes at the "Injin sans" who filled the car. Housing liimself occasionally, he wound a pewter horn so lustily that the sound rang far and wide, whereupon he col elapsed in the horse backet again while the neglected beast plodded along at his own pace. From the cultivated plain where rice, mulberry trees, beans and corn grew in patches about the farmers' thatched houses, we came to a moor with pines, bamboo, grass and wild flowers In abundance; while, to the left, high above, half hidden in fleecy clouds, tow ered the sacred mountain. A group of men sitting under trees at a shed where horses were changed, and a crowd of white-clad pilgrims packed so closely in a boxcar that their hats were hung out side, were the only people we saw until we came to the village of Subashlrl. A noon-tide quiet wag over thelace, but In the farther edge of the town we met some pilgrims returning from tho ascent. Clad in tightly-fitting garments of white cotton with rosaries about their necks, bells ringing at their waist-bands, staffs of white wood In their hands, straw sandals on their feet,, fringed straw mats swinging from their shoulders, and wide palm leaf hats to protect their heads and bodies from whatever the gods might send, they came walking down the -road toward the temple, there to make their final prayer to the goddess who dwells in Fuji's crater. At Yoshida. in a grove of ancient cryp tomerias, stands a Shinto temple, sacred to this same goddess. In a shed in the temple yard stands the white statue of a horse all harnessed for the gods to ride: there is a little pine tree planted by Prince Kunl (the least of the Im perial Princes), and in the temple are the enormous heads of two tengu, hideous hohgoblins, the votive offerings of soma township at the beginning of the China Japan war. Strange it is, but true, that progressive Japan is a land where fairy tales still hold sway in the childlike minds of the peasantry. Everywhere in this country of contradictions one comes up on temples dedicated to beneficent fairies who shower blessings, or to fear-insir-Ing hobgoblins, imaginary beings whom we Occidentals discard with The books of our childhood. At Yoshida -we left the tram line and walked for three miles across the moor to Funatsu. By the wayside is a shrine containing a big wooden image with a face of gold lacquer. It is the kindly Jizo. the god of little children and pat ron saint of travellers, most human and lovable of all the Buddhist deities. There were offerings hanging there, diminutive temple archways made of tin, bunehes of wild flowers, and straw sandals bigger than any man wears, woven especially for offerings and presented at shrines by those who wish to become untiring pedes trians. Carters came trudging along be side loads of logs, a youth sped by on a fcicrcle. a pine tree begged the one smoker of our party for a whiff of foreign tobacco; other farmers in the fields near by be came interested and the smoker was forced to hurry on with hla small store. Funatsu is a mountain town with quaint houses having shingled roofs held' down by pieces of lava. The two-storied Inn stands on a rocky point jutting out into lake Kawaguchi. Beside it - a crumbling archway marks the way to a Shinto Temple in a state of repair; while beyond is a Buddhist temple with a Ana old monastery, where the monks used to tell their beads long ago when Buddhism was a mighty power in the land. Many of them rest, no doubt, under the grey stones In the neighboring cemetery, having attained in death to that com plete mastery over earthly desires which was their dream when alive. The inn is a poor one and we were lad to leave the next morning, although the landlord had done the best that he knew for the comfort of his foreign guests, even sending out for the only cook in the town who could season to please Euro pean palates. Very good omelettes the only cook made, and very proud she was of the fact, as she showed by appearing after breakfast, apparently to help the nesan pick up our beds, but actually to pick up whatever compliments might be forthcoming. She knew that cooks, as well as poets, are born, and not made. Lake Kawaguchi all a-shimmer with morning light had looked beautiful from our rooms at the inn, but we did not realize its beauty until we were out in a boat on the water. On our right little white clouds rested softly on the tops of high terraced hills that came down to the water's edge: on the left was the broad moor at Fuji's base, occasional pine trees and houses breaking the line of shore. Passing a wooded island with a shrine to the Goddess Benten, one of the seven good luck deities, we came after an hour and a half to a village at the end of the lake. Some women flail ing grain paused in the steady whack! whack! whack! as we went by, and two small girls, out for a walk with babies on their backs, fled up an alley there to peer at us, half-terrified. Climbing to the hilltop we saw at our feet the town and the lake of Nishinoumi. No spot level, nor fertile enough for cultivation met our eyes after we left the village until we came to Xemba at the further end of the lake, after an hour's boating. Here we landed In a forlorn little plot of buckwheat, growing in rocky soil at the water's edge. Fol lowing a narrow path around a hill, we met a curious figure. A stout peasant came walking painfully s"idewlse with a heavy beam some ten feet long tied across his back, himself his only beast of burden. At Shojl Lake we shouted for a boat and saw it soon putting out from below the white hotel across the water. A Japanese woman, the wife of the English proprietor, met us at the landing and escorted us up the pretty wooded prom ontory to the hotel. Early the next morning as the mist rolled away from the lake, we left the hotel, a curious procession : three men carried a kago containing the "Okkasa ma." who barely fitted in in a cramped position with her hat off and her feet hanging out, for the "Okkasama" is about two Japanese ladies in size. Then came two black mountain horses led by bettos and ridden by members of the party; following were three more of us walking, and in the rear came three coolies with baggage strapped on their backs. After three miles we came to lovely Lake Motosu, where Fuji showed above the old lava stream. Excepting this one place, high mountains with clouds resting on their summits shut in the lake. The path goes for several miles 200 feet above the lake, and from this height we could see now between the red-barked pines, now through the branches of hard wood trees, now over open grassy slopes, ,the clear, blue water that deepens to Indigo near the shore where the mountains coma down . steeply. There are little coves with shallow beaches, and one wooded peninsula runs far out? It -was 8:30 o'clock; no sign of life was on the lake. a srous of farmers under 1 only the mountains and clouds war mlr- Infill 1 ITS n si 1 . . w wwc . ..: . :-.-.. ,;.. j ? rored there. Once we heard voices, and looking far down, saw the bobbing hats of a few peasants who were making shelves for crops, and looking up above, saw other peasants, literally scratching the stones for an. existence. The summit reached, we espied a village set in a deep and narrow valley that cuts Its way boldly through a hurly-burly oi. hills. . Down, down, down we went by a steep path till we came to a mountain stream and the little beginnings of cultivation; tiny places built up with rock where rice grew with a fringe of egg-plant about it to economize every scrap of earth. Back of us we could see the steep zlg zas: oath that had brought us down from the higher mountains, and -In front of us, a little well-populated valley along the beyond the river, were dim blue ranges bank of a tiny rlv toward the moun tains from whence it nows. Then, turn- clothes and a straw coat from which is sued lean arms full of action. The young man in the stern had a quiet, thoughtful face that showed no change of expres sion all the day as he moved the rudder slowly back and forth, looking steadily ahead. The river is a shallow and nar row stream running among gravel bars between hills terraced for the most part, yet ehowing here and there curious, col umnar formation of volcanic rock. After we had been some time gliding swiftly down the river we came to a cluster of houses on the bank, where we disem barked, for we were bound for Minobu to visit the tomb of Nichlren. For two miles and a half we walked in with, lines of white cloud drawn across them. Late in the afternoon we came Into the valley where the bamboo and persim mon trees proclaimed a warmer region than that of the mountain lakes. Along the stream was a stragling village, and from the doorways little children rushed pell-mell to shout and wave their arms at the "IJin sans." At one place in the brook stood a lare family bathtub, its stove filled with burning faggots. Had we been a few minutes later we should nave seen the steam arising In a cloud and, en veloped in the cloud, the red face and shoulders of a bather, for bathing In Japan is not a private affair in a tiled room with a porcelain tub. At a village on tle bank of the Fujikawa we hired a boat and dropped down the river to spend the night In a semi-foreign Inn at Yokal ohiha. The kago coolies, grateful for the "Ok kasama's kumsha." were with difficulty restrained from waking us the next morn lag at 4 o'clock to give us thanks and sayonara. "Af 8 o'clock we were under way, sitting on seats improvised from sacks of charcoal and matting, in a high sided, hlgh-prowa boat 40 feet long, built of pine boards and having a bottom so thin and flexible that it rose and fell with the motion of the river. In the bow stood a slender young man dressed In a palm-leaf hat, straw sandals, a fluttering white shirt and woolen under-drawers: the last worthjof chronicle, because they are worn so much as outer garments by Japanese coolies that I think the wear ers regard them as a final touch of ele gance to a Summer costume", just as their superiors do white cotton gloves. How ever, the costume was soon forgotten in the un-Japanese face of the man, a keen, thin face with a high forehead and pierc ing eyes. Occasionally he would thrust a long bamboo pole Into the rocks beneath the waveB and we would sail safely past a treacherous boulder. The two rowers were strange figures; one little man wore a kimono tucked up above a shirt and trousers of striped cotton, and a hat tied by a coolie towel about a face as rosy, round and amiable as that of some sweet natuced old lady. He was the owner of 15 boats, a man of some wealth in his village. The other was an old man with a face faded and shriveled as an Autumn leaf, a veritable scarecrow of an old man, in & calm-leaf bat. colorless cotton under- Ing suddenly, we came to the ereat arch way of the temple set in cryptomerias at the bottom of a ravine where a stream comes 'rushing down from wooded moun tains. Along the bank of the stream fol lowing its course runs the single village street of Minobu, a street of small shops and dwellings. In the opened rooms here and there were old men on . their knees turning wooden beads for rosaxles which were displayed for sale. Passing through the great two-storied gate built of new wood, elaborately carved, end listening for a moment to the sound of drums and mumbled invocations that came from some place in its Interior, we crossed a curving bridge of stone and came to a steep flight of steps. As endless, appar ently, as Jacob's ladder, they went up to ward the sky through a grove of crypt omerias. Two hundred and eighty big stone steps, and we reached the top quite breathless to find ourselves in an open space with a queer little red pagoda on our left; not an ordinary pagoda we dis covered, but a tomb filled with the bones of believers. To our right stood the bel fry; beyond it the abbot's quarters and the monastery, and facing us was the main building the Founder's Hall. Leav ing our shoes at the foot of the temple steps, we mounted to be greeted by a gaunt and shaven priest wearing a white gown wreh a purple mantle over It. How the fancy of Japanese artists in wood and paint turns to the animal world! Dragons, phoenixes, storks, seablrds. and tortoises cunningly carved, riot over the doorway. Within the greats wide hall is the pulpit, where the abbot preaches; there are rolls of Buddhist prayers in boxes on small tables: in the nave a gorgeous gilt baldachin hangs, and beyond, di vided from the audience hall by gilded pillars stands the ornate altar of red lacquer and gold. In front of It are two blue and white lanterns of Hizen pottery. The ceiling Is gilded and dec orated with many colors, but most In teresting Is the elaborately ornament ed shrine. Before it knelt the priest who had greeted us, and facing him another priest in a robe of green silk with a purple mantle embroidered with a golden . crest. One prayed and the other chanted, then slowly rising they opened the golden doors of the shrine. rolilng up a screen of silk and bamboo, and disclosing to' our view a life-size statue of Nichlren, grim, severe and black as Othello, sitting absorbed in thought as If the weight of the world were on his shoulders. For a moment we gazed, then the curtain dropped before the face of the law-giver- Fol lowing the. "Nightingale Gallery," so called because the boards emit a musical sound beneath the tread, we came to an ante-chamber and entering by a covered gallery, reaohed the Hall of the True Bones. It is a small oc tagonal . building, with a highly pol ished floor of red wood; on the walls are painted lotus flowers and leaves of natural size, growing from blue water against a background of gold; above are elaborate carvings of many colors, gorgeous yet toned to perfect harmony by gold and black, -and ending In a ceiling held with metal fastenings. The pagoda-shaped shrine of gold lacquer stands in the center of the room, with a gilt baldachin hanging above. The priest of the green and purple robes knelt before the shrine rubbing his beads and murmuring, "May we be saved by praying to the bones of Nichlren." Then he arose and opened the golden doors on one side of the shrine. When he had prayed.and knelt four times and opened all four doors we saw before us the bleached and crumbling bones of the saint of the 13th century. They are kept in a little octagonal crystal pagoda, resting In a lotus blossom of silver) above a re versed lotus flower of jade, all held together by a frame of the Oriental alloy called shakudo, which Is inlaid with silver. The priest gave 'us a paper wherein we were blessed for ever. Folded Inside It and tied with cord was a paper containing a few grains of rice, a cure-all for bodily Ills. Back In the boat again we went swinging over the rapids, narrowly but surely missing rocks that would have impaled us had our boatmen been less alert. One wreck we saw on the way and one log raft stuck fast in a shallow rapid much to the dismay of the men in charge, who gesticulated for help and pushed and pulled vainly, wading to their knees in swift water. Boats were coming up with sails set to catch the wandering breeze, but depending principally on trackers, many of them young boys who walked along the bank and In the stream- tugging with all their strength against breast straps fastened by ropes to the empty cargo boats. We passed villages and cuM vated hills and valley stretches, where the low banks were built up by rocks In bamboo baskets; we passed a wire bridge of a single span 165 feet long that bent and swayed as two men walked over it from the island to the mainland; we passed wild bluffs, with a shelf of road high above the river; we stopped at a town where the police officer forerunner of civilization in a uniform of white with white cotton gloves came and paid his respects to the official members of the party; we passed a paper mill; and then among the smaller hills that cluster about the high mountains above, as children cling to their parents' knees, we came suddenly to the sea. A narrow canal took us up to the railway station. Our boatmen waited until we had learned what train we. could catch, then with many thanks and many bows said Saj-onara. When they were gone, wo turned our faces toward 2Uth century Japan, and step ping aboard our train were back once more in the fnmiliur beaten track. WOOD PULP FROM SAWDUST Ingenious ficlieme That May Cheapen Ihe Price of Paper. o FFICIAL Information sent to the State Department at Washington, -. C, by L. Edwin Dudley. United States Consul at Vancouver, B. C may bring Joy to the hearts of tens of thou sands of large wholesale dealers in what is known to the paper trade as "news," and the coarser straw or bond paper, the former definition applying to paper which is adapted to the use of newspapers alone, while the latter a per is that which includes manila, wrapping, ox board, building paper, etc. Mr. Dudley's communication should bring corresponding sadness to present paper manufacturers, who may see a possible reduction of profits if the plan referred to by Mr. Dudley proves to be practical. The chief point in this communica tion is that the availability of the sup ply of wood pulp may bo largely in creased by the utilization of sawdust and sawmill waste for paper manufac turing purposes. It has long been known that there are vast economic possibilities In any plan that will utilize the waste product of lumber mills. As it follows that the plan to make use of waste products is of great importance. Consul Dudley has written to his department that a company with $1,000,000 capital has been organized at Vancouver. B. C, for the purpose of turning sawdust and other lumber mill waste Into paper. With the present tremendous demand for paper for manufacturing and other purposes, and the strong Indication that the demand will continue to increase, it Is not expected that the proposed plan will do more than relieve the- yit uation to an extent, for it is thor oughly recognized that unless scien tists or others discover some substitute for wood pulp, as at present obtained, from the forests of the United States and Canada, it can only be a few years before the timber uppiy from which wood pulp Is oblained will be entirely exhausted, only certain kinds of wood being adapted to the manufacture of wood pulp. Mr. Dudley says that the company Just organized at first contemplated the establishment of its plant at Aberdeen, Wash., but was compelled to abandon that location because it was discovered that the supply of fresh water was in sufficient. After a thorough investiga tion it finally arranged for the pur chase of 80 acres opposite Gambier Island, on Howe Sound. 20 miles from Vancouver, and at the mouth of Rainy River where there Is an abundant supply of water at all seasons. By utilizing the water power of the Rainy Klver, the company expects to de velop sufficient water power for mechan ical and domestic use, and for a series of mechanical grinders for t lie manu facture of ground wood, which is uned to supplement chemical liber in the manufacture of paper. The plan is to convey Hip refuse of the local sawmills, of which there Is said to be 30it.0) tons in this vicinity, in specially prepared scows to the plant, where the entire mass is to he dis integrated Into suitable fineness for con version into wood pulp. This, it is ex pected, will eliminate the expense In cident to the use of uniform cut wood, which is tald to,, hs the only method now in general use by the paper mills throughout Eastern Canada and tho United States. One of the Innovations of. the new company Is a patented process whereby it can use Douglas fir and other resin ous woods In the manufacture of wood pulp. Papermakers in the past havo never been able to use wdods contain ing pitch and resin for paper purposes, owing to the difficulty In separating the cellulose from the pitch, resin, and es sential oils, but by the new process. It is claimed, all those parts pass off In vapor and -the fiber is recovered by sub jecting tho mass to a system of pres sure: , The company now has in operation in Vancouver a small but complete plant for the manufacture of pulp and paper, which fully demonstrates the process, and which is both simple and ingenious. The wood is first placed in what is known as a chipping machine and re duced to small shavings. The shavings pass up a flume anil enter a digester, which consists of a large, perpendicular, copper-lined circular reservoir that or dinarily ranges from eight to ten feet lu. diameter and 24 to 48 feet in height. T'r digester is filled with a solution of caustic soda, and the entire mass of shavings, ranging from eight to ten tons, is thoroughly cooked under high steam pressure for several hours until the cel lulose is thoroughly released. The plant, as at present outlined, will have a capacity of SfiO tons of finished material per week, consisting of 200 tons of news and 160 tons of manila. Consul Dudley says that after having witnessed tho workings of the exhibi tion machinery of the forthcoming mill the thought occurred to him that through its means many additional uses for cellulose will be possible. The new apparatus, he believes, seems to have demonstrated the practicability of con verting the waste of fir and cedar, into cellulose at an expense which may en able other possessors of this material to follow the process described. Kansas City Journal.
