The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1933-07-28

Washington, d. C.-WNU Service.
TAR up in the jungles of French
- Indo-China, some 800 miles from
the doorstep of the world as
measured in distance, thousand
years in the past as measured in time,
and aeons back in the unknown as
measured in history, is Angkor, one
of the most puzzling works ever con-
trivea by the hand of man.
Temple and town and network of
dim and forgotten shrines, it repre-
sents a culture that must have been
far in advance of anything coeval with
It and a power that must have been
virtually irresistible even in Asia,
where men at arms were plentiful and
warfare was a favored business.
But the culture died and the men
who had built it disappeared, and for
hundreds of years the forests Of BAN
yam and bamboo hid from the eyes and
memory of the world what had been
q metropolis Of million inhabitants.
Two generations ago French nat
uralist broke through the wall of
jungle In a search for specimens of
tropical life and came upon a spec
tacle such as the slaves of the lamp
might have contrived for Aladdin. Be
fore him, In the quivering silence, rose
the FIVE towers of vast step pyra-
mid, stone tapestry representative
of an art and architecture like moth
ing else within the ken of man.
A moated wall surrounded 1t and a
clustered gate opened upon a cause
way that led to its rocketing stair
were close about its lower stage and
odd clumps of verdure grew from its
arched roofs, it seemed that life had
been in its shadowy galleries only
moment ago. The temple was virtual
~ intact
Still an Unsoived Puzzle.
1t is now more than seventy years
since the stunned eyes of Mouhot, the
naturalist, looked upon the magnifi-
cent heights of Angkor-more than
seventy years since the greatest de-
tective story in the history of the
world was laid out with it's million
stony clews to puzzle the savants. To-
day, with its principal remains classi-
fed and ticketed. its inscriptions trans
lated, and its monuments lifted out
of the jungle, Angkor is still the vast
and silent mystery that it was in the
beginning.
The world knows more about 1t now.
Splendid automobile roads, cut through
what was once a thicket of bamboo
and is now an endless rice field, bring
the traveller, on regular schedule and
with little personal discomfort, from
Saigon, at the foot of Asia, to the
bungalow on the edge of the Angkor
moat, in few hours Yearly hundreds
of visitors from all parts of the world
are seeking out this odd corner and
carrying away with them amazed re-
ports that will lure other hundreds.
And yet, were 1t not for the fact
that these tremendous structures re-
main much as they were when they
were first built, defiant of time and
weather, by the Tonic Sap (Great
Lake,, the incredible tale of the CIV
ilization that built them and vanished
would rank, in the mind of the world,
as it did In Mouhot's time, as none
too-cleverly-constr myth.
But the monuments are there and no
mere shutting of the eyes will dis
pose of them: Angkor Thorn, a walled
city within whose metropolitan area
at one time must have lived more peo-
pie than were to be found In the
Rome of Augustus or the Carthage Of
Hannibal; and Angkor Vat, supreme
architectural effort of this strange cul-
ture, not only the most grandiose tenn
pie of the group, but one of the most
stupendous undertakings begun by
man since the cornerstone was laid
for the Tower of Babel.
About Angkor Thorn are scattering
remains of earlier edifices, and far in
the jungle are capital cities built and
abandoned with that predigality which
seems always to have been character
istic of oriental monarchs. Traces of
this lost civilization have been found
wherever a lean tributary of the Me-
kong river branches out toward the
north
Once Splendid Metropolis.
Here at Angkor was the finest me-
tropolis I'm ASIA town whose swag-
gering splendor is permanently en-
bossed In temple wall and tower and
terrace. 1t was the perfect express
sion of a race of conquerors and must
have been as wealthy as Babylon un-
der Nebuchadnezzar. And yet, for
some cause which an archeologist can
only guess, the populace walked out
of 1t and never came back. The jungle
moved in and engulfed it for five GEN.
turtles.
There begins and there ends the
mystery Of Angkor.
Little enough is known about the
origins Of the race that evolved the
culture which centered In Angkor
Thorn. The people were called the
Khmers and were either Of Hindu ex-