WONDERS OF LOST EMPIRE.

Hokitika Guardian, 10 April 1922, Page 4

WONDERS OF LOST EMPIRE.

MAGNIFICENCE OF 10 CENTURIES AGO.

ELEPHANTS’ TERRACE

By Viscount Northcliffe in Daily Mail)

At Sea, Bay or Bengal, Dec. 1921

Ten centuries ago, or thereabouts, the then people of Cambodia built the town and temples of Angkor. Their ruins, in far-away Indo-China, are now among the greatest wonders of the world.

Unfortunately, there is nothing today in the whole of the known earth with which these stupendous ruins may be aptly compared. Not in India, nor China, nor Java, nor in any country where the early civilisations still lie half buried, is there anything exactly like Angkor. Karnak I remember as a tremendous, an overpowering relic; but its extent is a hand’s breadth compared with only so much of Angkor as has been already freed from the jungle that enguilfed it centuries ago. The area of the great tcmpß itself is four eorde in Paris; and the area of the city is five times that of the temple. Full description of these wondrous, colossal fragments of a vanished empire is out of the question here. One can only state simply that size, proportion, beauty, originality, hut again size, huge size, ate' the impressions left by a first visit. ELEPHANTS’ PLAYGROUND. A giants’ causeway some 300 yards long leads over what originally was an immense moat (but is now a playground for the King’s elephants) to the steep steps in the middle of the facade up which you climb to the interior. The facade (one of' four) is about 500 yards long, and consists of wonderful cloisters, the walls of which are rich in basreliefs in almost perfect preservation. The cloisters are double-roofed, one roof above the other, of a peouliai

curved design ; while the vaulting or the cloisters is of a style much like Gothic, pointed, and almost truly angular. The openings between the supporting columns are filled with a kind of grille, the uprights of which arc small columns carved exactly like Jacobean

table legs. Above this extraordinary facade rise the five great remaining towers of the temple itself—towers whose design reminds one of no other architecture in the world.

Within is a labyrinth of lovely courts, cloisters, pools, shrines, one above the other, always at the head or at the foot of a flight of extremely steep steps. This steepness I feel to he one of the special beauties of Angkor, as it gives sudden relief to eyes grown accustomed to a profusion of the finest detail, if the stairs that abound all over the temple were of normal pi l eh, their efi"' • would probably he to flatten the whole aspect of the place and to throw the tremendous mass of buildings out of proportion.

PAGEANT. His Majesty the King called at the bungalow that night to do honour to Marshal J off re. He came with a little train of candle-bearers and half a dozen white-tunic’d Court officials a very dignified little figure, whoso alert face wore a cheery smile. His Majesty is 83 years old, but his energy remains unabated.

AVe s aw him again .the next day in resplendent 12th. century Durbar which he had personally organised and produced. I say “produced” advisedly, for no other word can describe the astonishing result of his minute and laborious supervision. The spectacle lasted for three-quarters of an hour; and the procession included over 2000 people Princes, Princesses, Court offi ends, 50 elephants, the royal lior s es i and bullock-carts by the score. Yet there was not the slightest ■ hitch of any kind; and the huge cortege unrolled itself along the great of the temple without a single pause. The Princes, the Ministers, the Princesses, the King’s wives, old and young, the maids of honour, dressed in shot silks of every line and blazing with jewels, went by in palanquins; and over the heads of princes and of great men nodded the many-tiered state umbrellas, denoting by their number anj the number of their tiers the rank of their owners.

Followed the dancers, all glittering in their tinselled attire, borne in bul-lock-earts; dancers, fan-bearers, royal servants lying in hammocks; priests, the official in charge of the royal elephants, the King’s horses, which no man but he may mount, white-robed Brahmins, musicians; tumblers; and the King himself, sitting in a lofty palanquin of wonderful design, studded with jewels. After the procession had passed he came to the steps of the shrine forming the point of vantage whence the .Governor-General and his guests watched the great spectacle, and presented us to his latest wife, a charming girl of 19, of whom his Majesty is exceedingly proud. King Sarowath is evidently well uso t | to the fierce light which heats upon a throne, for he showed himself perfectly serene under the ftisilnde of snapshot cameras directed at him by the onlookers.

Later in the evening the King commanded dances for us and directed them in person, sitting at a little table covered with the gold boves and jars (containing cigarettes, writing materials and other necessaries), without which he never stirs forth.

The King of Cambodia is a very severe critic of dancing, on which Ik> has long been an expert authority. •Each dance has a long and usually an intricate story; and succss or failure in the right interpretation of the tale lies in the slightest movements of hand or feet. His Majesty was by no means content with the performance on this occasion, and. as the dancers at fault passed him he spoke to several of them sharply. In some cases the dances were much like those which Pavlova and Mordkin took the town by storm 10 years ago dances of pursuit and capture, of faithless love, of murdered swains. But neither of the great Russians ever dreamed of such gold and silver dresses, nor of such weird masks, nor of such a maze of complicated motions as those whidh left us marvelling at Angkor on that unforgettable night. And neither of them had a millionaire monarch for ballet master. Very early the next morning thej

big bungalow was astir. The courtyard was buzzing with the voices of the servants of the great ones and of the lesser ones, as well as with the humbler fussing of the servant’s servants.

By six o’clock we were once more on the open road. It was just before sunrise, the hour of begging; and, as we drove through the little hamlets J amid the trees we came upon company, after company of bonzes, each with hi s disciple, a child of 10 or so, who carried the sleeping mat and the begging bowl. Five or six of these shaven holy men would stop at a cottage door, have their bowls filled with food and depart to eat in privacy. This they d:> twice a day, at sunrise and at sunset. These particular bonzes were but a fragment of a mighty army of them which had slept the night before in the temple. As we drove away we saw them slowly streaming out of the „reat doors and down the long, grey steps a river of yellow robes. That day wo recrossed the Great

Salt Lake, and after spending the night with the Resident at (Pnom Penh drove off next morning through rich country to Kep, a little haven on the coast of the Gulf of Siam. Her© we found our steamer waiting to take us to Bangkok. Kep is a charming little spot, in some ways very much like the French Riviera; and it made a delightful last glimpse of. one of France’s richest treasure lands—that Indo-China which had afforded one of the most interesting, instructive and pleasant episodes of my world-journey.