non-professional--the non-professionals were local farmers--knelt on a
low platform or danced in front of it. They were extraordinarily able.
A dramatic tale by one of the story-tellers was about a yokelish young
wrestler and a daimyo. Another described the woes and suicide of an
old-time Court lady.

The next day we started on foot on a seven miles' climb of the
volcano. Its lower slopes were covered with a variety of that
knee-high bamboo with a creeping root, which is so troublesome to
farmers when they break up new ground. One variety is said to blossom
and fruit once in sixty years and then die. An ingenious professor has
traced mice plagues to this habit. In the year in which the bamboo
fruits the mice increase and multiply exceedingly. Suddenly their food
supply gives out and they descend to the plains to live with the
farmers.

At length we came in sight of the smoke and vapour of the volcano.
Soon we were near the top, where the white trunks and branches of dead
trees and scrub, killed by falling ash or gusts of vapour, dotted an
awesome desolation of calcined and fused stone and solidified mud. At
the summit we looked down into the churning horror of the volcano's
vat and at different spots saw the treacly sulphur pouring out,
brilliant yellow with red streaks. The man to whom there first came
the idea of hell and a prisoned revengeful power must surely have
looked into a crater. In the throat of this crater there seethed and
spluttered an ugliness that was scarlet, green, brown and yellow. The
sound of the steam blowing off was like the roar of the sea. The air
was stifling. It was very hot, and there was a high eerie wind.

Adventurous men had built rude bulwarks of stone over some of the