Fisherman & farmer. [volume] (Edenton, N.C.) 1887-19??, 1895-01-25
EDENTON, N. c.. FRIDAY, JANUARY 25 1895

through which royal professions marched.
Arches under which kings were carried. City
with reservoir twenty miles in circumter-
ence. Extemporized lakes that did their
cooling and refreshing for twelve centuries:
Ruins more suggestive than Meirose AMI
Kenilworth. Ceylonian Karnaks and Luxora.
Ruins retaining much of grandeur, though
wars bombarded them, and time put his
chisel on every block, and, more than all.
vegetation put Its anchors and prizes and
wrenches IN all the crevices. Dagobas, or
places where relics of saints OF dieties are
kept-dag obas 400 feet high and their fallen
material buryiIg precious things. for the
sight of which modern curiosity has digged
Gnd blastel in vain. Procession OF e.N-
plants in imitation, wrought into lustrous
marble. Troops OF horses IN full run.
Shrines, chapels, cathedrals wrecked on the
mountain side. Stairs of r'oonstone. Ex-
quisite scrolls rolling up more mysteries
than will ever be unrOlled. over sixteen
square miles the ruins of one city strewn.
Thronerooms on which at different times sat
165 kings, resigning in authority they Ill.
herited. Walls that witnessed coronations,
assassinations, subjugations, trtumphs. Al
tars at which millions bowed ages before the
orchestras celestial woke the sheperds with
midnight overture.
When Lieutenant Skinner in 1892 discov-
cred the site of some of these cities, he fount
congregated in them undisturbRd assem-
blages of leopards, porcupines, hamlngoes
and pelicans reptiles summing themselves
on the affairs, prima donnas rendering
ornithological chant from deserted music
halls One king restored much of the grand
eur, rebuilt 1900 residences, but ruin sooI.
resumed its scepter. But all is down-the
spires down, the pillars down, the tablets
down, the glory of splendid arches down.
What killed those cities? Who slew the New
York and London of the year 500 B. c.? Was
it unhealthed with host of plaques? Was
arujaC LAYING SaiOa2 Was If whole
generations weakened by their own vices?
Mystery sits amid TIE monoliths and brick
dust, finger On lip in eternal silence, while
the centuries guess and guess in vain. We
simply know that genius planned those
cities, and immense populations inhabited
them. An eminent writer estimates that
pile of bricks in one ruin of Ceylon would be
enough to build a wall ten feet high from
Edinburgh to London. Sixteen hundred
pillars with carved capitals are standing
sentinel for ten miles.
You can judge somewhat of the size OF the
cities by the reservoirs that were required
to slack their thirst. Judging the size of the
city from the size of the cup out of which 1t
drank. Cities crowded with inhabitants
not like American or English cities, but
packed together as only barbaric tribes can
pack them. But their knell was sounded,
their light went out. Giant trees are the
only royal family now occupying those
palaces. The growl of wild beasts where
once the guffaw of wassail assembled Anuraj-
ahpura and Pollonarna will never be re-
builded. Let all the living cities of the
earth take warning. Cities are human, hav-
inga time to be born and a time to die. No
more certainly have they a cradle than
grave. A last Judgment is appointed for in
divduals, but cities have their last judg-
ment in this world. They bless, they curse,
they worship, they blaspheme. they suffer,
they are rewarded, they are overthrown.
Preposterous says some one, to think
that any of our American or European cities
which have stood 50 long can ever come
through vice to extinction. But New York
and London have not stood as long as those
Ceylonese cities stood. Where is the throne
outside of CeYlon on which 165 successive
kings reigned for lifetime. Cities ant'na-
tions that have lived far longer than our
present cities or nation have been sepul-
chered. Let all the great municipalities Of
this and other lands ponder. 1t is as true
now as when the psalmist wrote it and as
true of cities and nations as of individuals,
''The Lord knoweth the way OF the rtgh-
teous, but the way OF the ungodly shall
perish"