We are rowing three miles across the lake in a sampan, with an upturned prow, propelled by some oarsmen, and which much resembles a picture of an old Roman galley. Their wooden oars, a long blade tied to a piece of wood, are fixed to the gunwale, in rowlocks formed of a pin of wood, and on this they roll over and back each time, a clumsy but effectual movement. The surrounding view is wondrously beautiful. The green pointed mountains with their sharp edges coming down directly into the lake on one side; the other covered with shrubs and some overhanging trees, under whose sweeping arms we glide to the landing stage, in the lights and shadows of a still glorious afternoon. It sounds but a tame description, and yet in reality it is sublime, and, for some reason hard to discover, it is absolutely different, and because of that much more charming than any other lake I have ever seen.
We begin a long ascent, with a continued view, looking backward, where translucent clouds float down the mountain sides, which are mirrored faithfully in the green waters, and as we plunge into a dense wood of bamboos, we take our last farewell look back at Lake Hakone. It is a stony and steep path, cut in zig-zags through the thick undergrowth where there is no room for the long poles of the chair to turn, so we have to walk. Suddenly we come across a little square village, built round a wooden bath house, where the whole population of invalids are bathing together in the warm mineral spring.
As we ascend, the scene grows wilder. Vegetation decreases, and masses of barren rock appear. The earth is warm and steaming, nor must you leave the path, as these treacherous brown curling scales of earth are only a crumbling upper crust, over the furnace below, and lives have more than once been lost here. The air reeks of sulphurous fumes, a strong overpowering stench. And this curious volcanic scene continues, until we reach the abomination of desolation. Here, standing above, we look far away down into a vast cauldron of steam, that rises up and envelops us in suffocating fumes of sulphur, so strong that, wheezing and coughing, we have to turn backwards to get fresh breath, so dense that we can only dimly see the great masses of rock around us. More often they are not rocks, but clumps of crumbling lava, loosely welded together in fantastic shapes, and that take the most wonderfully bright colours from the surrounding mineral substances, of orange, carmine, blue, madder and brown. In one place there is a little stream, in which the sulphur deposit is so thick that there is a rich coating round of green, bright as malachite. The boiling water of many streams swells the vapour that rises from this fitly-named Ojigoku, or Big Hell.