Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 December 1898 — The Mysterious Temple of India. [ARTICLE]

The Mysterious Temple of India.

She great mystery about Indo-Cbina, and one which must ever be insolvable, is the story of the lost race and the vanished civilization of that strange country. The mighty walls of Angkor-Vat, rising in the midst of sparsely populated jungles, remain as the memorial of a great empire which has utterly disappeared and is altogether lost to history. No one wi'l ever know who planned this gigantic temple, or what tyrant hounded on his myriads of people to build up those immense blocks of stone and cover them with the most elaborate of sculptures. Angkor-Vat is one of the most astonishing monuments in the world, and this forgotten temple was built so as to endure as long as the earth itself, where it not for the irresistibly destructive effect of plant life on the strongest walls that man can raise. Only a highly civilized and very wealthy people could have erected Ang-kor-Vat—a very different race from the Annamite of modern days. The whole nation has disappeared as completely as the busy myriads who once populated the wastes of Memphis.—Saturday Evening Post.