The road lay straight before us--a long white streak through the soft misty green of the plain. As we drove along, the pink sheen, which rested on the hazy hillside to our left, like a handful of scattered roses, began to spread and glide down into the valley, kindling as it flowed, until the whole vast vapoury plain was suffused with purple. The mist began to dissolve, and float upwards in little crimson drifts. Suddenly, the great golden sun leaped up from behind the eastern summits, and day streamed in upon us. The country-folk had already begun the labours of the day. Children met us on the road, driving powerful grey buffaloes before them; in a hamlet which we passed, the women were pounding rice, breaking the silence of the morning with the rhythmic click-clack of the wooden pestles. And, here and there, groups of labourers moved through the rice fields, weeding. Overhead, larks were soaring and singing; it was the first time I had heard their sweet shrill note in Java. After a while, a partridge flew up with a whirr of hurrying wings, almost from between the hoofs of the horses. They are plentiful in this neighbourhood. At certain seasons of the year, large parties of sportsmen assemble here to shoot them.
On starting from the railway station, I had thought that, in half an hour or so, we should have reached the hill-range, which bounded the plain in the north. But the clear atmosphere has a perspective of its own, confusing to eyes unaccustomed to it. After about two hours of rapid driving we were still in the valley--on either side of us, immense tracts of soft bluish green, full of the thousand lights and shades that form the peculiar beauty of these terraced rice-fields; and, all around, the circling summits which seemed no sensibly nearer than at first.
At every turn of the road, I expected to reach the base of the hills. And again and again, they appeared to recede as we advanced, until the fancy was stirred to the idea of some magic wall environing the captive, withersoever he might turn; and the wish to find an exit out of this hill-bounded plain grew almost to a fever. At length, we reached it--a narrow defile between two steep green heights; and the road began to climb. Here, in the deep glens and valleys, the air was notably cooler than on the sunlit plain. Where the road broadened, it was shaded by tall njamploeng trees, which strewed the ground with their white transparent blossoms; and their faint fresh odour, which reminded one of the scent of March violets, perfumed the breeze.