The Press., 1920-06-03
BURIED IN JUNGLE.
Tropic Growth Overwhelmed City
 of Angker Thom.
Devastation Wrought, Especially by the Deadly Fig Tree, Is So Complete as to Be Almost
 Unbelievable.

l In the heart of Cambodia, one of the
 five provinces of French Indo-China.
 lie the ruins of the royal city of Ang-
 kOr Thom, built somewhere between
 the fifth and seventh centuries, and of | the marvellous temple, Angkor Wat The architecture, which is Hindu. is being disentangled from jungle grOwths | by French archeologists. The city and | temple are thought to have been built | by the khmers. long-vanished race | which certainly has no connection with
 the Cambodians of the present day. Writing in Harper's, Ellen N. La
 Motte describes a trip through the
 jungle on an elephant in order to visit one of the more remote ruins.
 "In about ten minutes" she writes.
 i've 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 and
 silence that enveloped 1t, were appal- ling. and our scrambling feet and hushed voices only intensified the aw- ful stillness-the silence of centuries.
 "The horror and vindictiveness of the jungle! Everywhere giant stones were overthrown, pushed out of place and toppled over in heaps through the sinister vitality of that deadly tree. the fig tree of the ruins. The roots of this tree begin as innocent, hairlike fllaments 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 and destroy everything in their pathway. One fearful root that wandered in its course through whole corridor of mighty carvings was 90 meters in length, with the circumference of an elephant. And the tree is useless, too just spOngy. porous wood. unfit for anything.
 "For an hour we wandered through dim. ruined chambers, scrambled and climbed over fallen pillars and carv- ings of great beauty and delicate, in- tricate design-all in utter ruin and the fig tree of destruction in supreme control. It was good to reach our elephants again and to leave behind that overwhelmed and evil spot.
 "Only the most important and beau tiful ruins are being reclaimed from the forest, those in Angkor Thom, as we'll as the Angkor Wat. These out lying 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. not an archeologist than the picked up, restored and cleared ruins that the government Is retaining.
 "Of course. one cannot see them very well, these buried temples, swamped In undergrowth. enveloped by a twi light gloom. And as I scramble over fallen images. over barbaric sculp- lures. my mind Is largely set on ser pents And when we reach fairly open space if turns to monkeys-the agile black gibbons that hoot 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"