Highland recorder. (Monterey, Highland County, Va.) 1877-1972, 1920-04-16
BURIED IN JUNGLE
Tropic Growth Overwhelmed City
of Angker Thorn.
Devastation Wrought, Especially by
the Deadly Fig Tree, Is So
Complete as to Be Almost
Unbelievable.

, In the heart of Cambodia, one of the
five provinces of French Indo-China.
lie the ruins of the royal city of Ang-
kor Thorn, built somewhere between
the fifth and seventh centuries, and of
the marvellous temple, Angkor Wat.
The architecture, which is Hindu. is
being disentangIed from jungle growths
Ivy French Psychologists. The city and
temple are thought to have been built
by the Khmers, a long-vanished race
which certainly has no connection with
the Cambodians of the present day.
Writing in Harper's. Ellen N. La
Motto describes Il trip through the
jungle on an elephant in order to visit
one of the more remote ruins.
SIN about ten minutes" she writes,
1--WE found ourselves climbing over the
fallen stones of an immense temple
that lay completely buried and over
grown by the forest. SO thick was the
foliage that only a dim twilight pre-
vailed. The supreme loneliness of that
buried temple, the utter isolation ana
silence that enveloped it, were appal-
ling. and our scrambling feet and
hushed voices only intensified the aw-
full stillness-the silence of centuries.
"The horror and vindictiveness OF
the Jungle! Everywhere giant stones
were overthrown, pushed out of place
md toppled over in heaps through the
sinister vitality Of that deadly tree, the
fig tree of the ruins. The roots OF
his tree begin as innocent, halrllke
filaments which insinuate themselves
through the crevices of the great
stones and slip through tiny openings
and cracks, then grow and develop
with an evil vigor that nothing can
withstand. They never die, never are
starved out, these fine, hairlike roots.
The big stones never crush or kill
them. Year by year, century by CEN
tury, their fierce strong life is fostered
by the fierce heat and fierce rains OF
the tropics until they overthrow ana
destroy everything in their pathway,
One fearful root that wandered IN ITS
course through a whole corridor or
mighty carvings was 80 meters in
length. with the circumference of an
elephant. And the tree is useless, too
lust spongy, porous wood, unfit for
anything.
"For an hour we wandered through
dim, ruined chambers, scrambled and
climbed over fallen pillars and cary
ings of great beauty and delicate, in
tricate design-all in utter ruin and
the fig tree of destruction in supreme
control. 1t was good to reach our
elephants again and to leave oehinn
that overwhelmed and evil spot.
"Only the most important and beauo
tiful ruins are being reclaimed from
the forest, those in Angkor Thorn, as
we'll as the Angkor Wat. These out
living ones are still left as originally
discovered, buried and smothered by
the everlasting forest. To me they are
far more interesting in this sinister
setting, choked and swamped by the
mighty growth of the tropical jungle.
They afford more thrills to me who am
not an archeologiSt than the picked
I'D, restored and cleared ruins that
the government is retaining.
"Of course. one cannot see them very
well, these buried temples, swamped
in underground. enveloped by a twi-
light gloom. And as scramble over
fallen images. over barbaric sculp-
lures, my mind is largely set on SER
penis. And when we reach a fairly
open space it turns to monkeys-the
agile black gibbons that loot and leap
overhead at our coming. furious at the
intrusion upon their solitude. Between
snakes and monkeys there are times
when I forget to admire these old
temples. supposed to be among the
most marvellous in the world"