It was half-past five when the _basha_ started out among the ruts, and the clear, colourless light of a northern evening--we were 3000 feet up--which is not cold, yet is so colourless, enclosed the earth. The sky was as bare of clouds as the common of landmarks; the one lay palely blue above, the other stretched subduedly green below. Here and there the green was crossed by long flushes of colour, with the red of tiny tiger-lilies, and the pale yellow of the evening primrose. Behind, Lord Fuji rose majestic. At first a line of fleecy cloud had lain above the deep green of the forest, and Fuji’s head was lost in mist, but at the sunset the clouds fell away lower and lower, until the whole long sweep of Fuji rose up triumphant into the blue. It was but slowly that the _basha_ jolted among the deep-cut ruts of the common, and but slowly that we travelled on, downwards. Looking out across the wide flat land we saw that the whole world was slightly rounded, slightly tilted. It was like journeying over a large green apple. The globe in fact palpable, visibly rounded. Away on the left the sun was setting in straight streamers of pale red edged with shining gold. And the green common, with its pools of little red lilies, and its bands of pale yellow primroses, grew greyer and greyer. Fuji San, perfect in long smooth curves, stood purple-blue behind. Clear-cut as a jewel in a setting he rose up, rose up, until the rounded strength of his summit lay bright sapphire on the azure sky. * * * * * Over the ruts the _basha_ stumbled, endlessly jolting. The sun set slowly, and slowly the colours died. Grey lay the common in front of us, on each side. Lord Fuji was but a dark, still shadow. And over the ruts the _basha_ stumbled in long, slow jolts. We were very tired, our backs ached with the jolting, and our arms were numb with pain. All around us the grey spaces of the common stretched uninterruptedly, without house or village. Where was Yoshida? Still the _basha_ lumbered and stumbled, and we looked for lights and houses. Nothing. Only in front of us the grey level of the common grew tall and black.... In a few more jolts the deep black had engulfed us, grey common and all, and we were wandering among dark shadows that were trees. In the very pitch of the blackness the cart suddenly stopped. We were asked to get out. The _basha_ went no further. “But Yoshida?” “_Yoshida yoroshī!_--all right,” replied the man, unconcerned, as though every traveller to every town arrived in a dark wood without sight or sound of houses; and he drove off. Our guide picked up the luggage, and we followed stumbling, straining our eyes to tell the deeper shadows that were trees from the paler dark that meant pathway.