Etc. So This Usu-Taki Took Me Altogether By
Surprise, And For A Time Confounded All My Carefully-Constructed
Notions Of Locality.
I had been told that the one volcano in the
bay was Komono-taki, near Mori, and this I
Believed to be eighty
miles off, and there, confronting me, within a distance of two
miles, was this grand, splintered, vermilion-crested thing, with a
far nobler aspect than that of "THE" volcano, with a curtain range
in front, deeply scored, and slashed with ravines and abysses whose
purple gloom was unlighted even by the noon-day sun. One of the
peaks was emitting black smoke from a deep crater, another steam
and white smoke from various rents and fissures in its side -
vermilion peaks, smoke, and steam all rising into a sky of
brilliant blue, and the atmosphere was so clear that I saw
everything that was going on there quite distinctly, especially
when I attained an altitude exceeding that of the curtain range.
It was not for two days that I got a correct idea of its
geographical situation, but I was not long in finding out that it
was not Komono-taki! There is much volcanic activity about it. I
saw a glare from it last night thirty miles away. The Ainos said
that it was "a god," but did not know its name, nor did the
Japanese who were living under its shadow. At some distance from
it in the interior rises a great dome-like mountain, Shiribetsan,
and the whole view is grand.
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