There is a temple near me, the other side of Takamatsu, where the priest has died, but his widow carried on. She is fascinated by the “kan kan ishi,” the stones that come tumbling down in fissures from the rock precipice which is up the very steep hill behind her. The stones, hard like glass and black, are, I imagine, a form of obsidian deriving from basalt. When struck, they make a bell-like sound—kan kan.

A large block like Heart of Darkness is rare, but is found occasionally. From exposure to its surrounding matrix the skin is always white. The stone within is an intense black.