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[/floatr]Sir Rutherford Alcock was the first British diplomatic representative in Japan, taking up the position in 1858. On the 26th July, 1860, at the age of 51, he climbed Mt Fuji and became the first recorded foreigner to achieve the feat. Alcock went up the mountain while on a tour of the country: violence in the capital towards foreigners had forced a temporary abandonment of the legation. The illustration above shows the climb and is taken from Alcock's book "The Capital of the Tycoon" which he wrote after returning to Britain. Apparently, his faithful Scottish terrier, Toby, also reached the summit, However,tragedy was later to strike as this account of the trip relates:
Flushed with this success Alcock decided to return to Tokyo by way of the famed sulphur springs at Atami on the Izu Peninsular, which lies to the south of Mount Fuji. At that time the Oyu Geyser at Atami was one of the world's three mightiest geysers, yet no Westerner had ever seen its power. It would take Alcock and Toby over a month to travel down to Atami, arriving there in September 1860...From their lodgings Alcock and Toby set out to view the famed Oyu geyser, just outside Atami; a geyser that sent scalding jets of water and steam at 70 kilometres per hour up to 10 metres into the air, 'shaking the earth with its vigorous blasts'. Upon reaching Oyu, Toby had the misfortune to stand on a piece of ground from which the geyser would periodically erupt. The inevitable happened; the unsuspecting Toby was blasted into the air by the force of the scalding water and steam shooting out from the earth. A distraught Alcock organised a funeral for Toby in Atami and Toby was duly buried beside the Oyu geyser. The stone, which still stands today [pictured below], reads simply 'Poor Toby, 23 September 1860'. Alcock also erected another stone beside Toby's tombstone. This is inscribed with the less modest words 'I am the first non-Japanese to have climbed Fusiyama and visited Atami'.
