The new era. (Walden, Colo.) 1906-19??, 1908-11-12
ANMZ

Atami! The name calls up one OF
the strangest and loveliest spots in
Japan, a place where the orange trees
seem to be in perpetual fruit where
warm winds blow almost all the year
round, yet where the sea rolls in with
unceasing thunderings loud as on any
Atlantic coast, to be drowned in their
turn by the terrific roar of the geyser,
which bursts forth thrice in the "a
hours, clouding the air with its fierce
white steam.
On either side of the smooth curves
- the bay the rocks run far out into
the sea-black, forbidding rocks,
honey-combed with deep caves. where
you can row through arched water
ways, rough and crested by the ever
lasting breakers beyond, and come out
into the sunshine again accompanied
by huge sea-birds startled from their
eyries by the passage of your boat.
Your boatman must steer carefully,
for the depths are spiky with sub
merged crags running up to the day
light here and there, in island spires,
where scarlet lilies have taken root
and are waving their flaming banners
in the midday sun. That is in high
summer; but If it be winter, the land
may be clothed in snow, the sea is
one stretch of frosty diamond and
sapphire, softened in the foreground
by clouds of surf that breaks over the
rocks in pearly spray, blush in the
shade and rosy gold where 1t leaps
high against the sun. And behind you,
through the foothills, one road to the
outer world runs low between groves
OF greenest trees covered with the
tiny fiery globes G. the Mandarin or
ange, which will only grow in warm
and sheltered spots.
Directly behind the town the other
road winds through the rice fields,
up to the ruined temple in whose
grove stands the Oldest tree in Japan,
the great camphor tree, reputed to
have lived for n thousand years. Still
1t filings out tent above tent OF radiant
eaverdure, though it's base is so worn
Va hollow that little chapel has
oeen made In the trunk, with a seat
where travellers can rest and mediate
on the superiority of trees to men.
No wonder that earth clothes CRATE
fully the venerable roots of this patri-
arch tree! Ages ago, the local wise
men say, when the geyser tore its way
up from the heart Of the world, it
belched its boiling flood into Atami
bay and killed all the fish, so that the
people were desperate, seeing their
livelihood destroyed before their eyes,
Then the good priest of the temple,
praying earnestly for his flock, threw
a branch of the sacred tree on the sea-
commanding the boiling spring to re-
turn to earth and do no more damage.
Instantly 1t obeyed; and l am sure
that the priest, like practical Japa-
nese. took advantage Of its submission
to set reasonable hours for its bub
blings up, for, since the memory of
man, 1t returns every eight hours, fill
ing the hundreds of water-pipes that
are laid to carry 1t away and provide
hot waite. for the inhabitants of Atami
Dropping from here and wandering
through hundred aspects Of the ever
varying Japanese scenery, there is a
footpatn to Miyanoshita; but one must
leave Atami at daybreak to reach
that Mttle warm-bath paradise before
dark. and then one will be very health
lily tired! The Atami fishermen are
rough, rather saturnine fellows, accus-
toned to the hardest work and the
most constant risks. They have to
beat out a considerable distance for
their catch, and the sea .ound those
coasts is as capricious as a spoilt
.sS smiling at one mome< and
going into RACES at the next. The