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Easter Island: Early Witnesses

William Thomson


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and ninety-six small temples disposed in five regular parallelograms. In the center is a large cruciform temple surrounded by forty flights of steps, richly ornamented with sculpture and containing many apartments.
   The tropical vegetation has ruined most of the smaller temples, but some remain tolerably perfect, from which the effects of the whole may be imagined. About half a mile off is another temple, called Chandi Kali Bening, 72 feet square and 60 feet high, in fine preservation, and covered with sculptures of Hindu mythology surpassing any that exists in India. Other ruins of palaces, halls and temples, with abundance of sculptured deities, are found in the same neighborhood.
   About 80 miles eastward, in the province of Kedu, is the great temple of Borobods. It is built upon a small hill, and consists of a central dome and seven ranges of terraced wall, covering the slope of the hill, forming open galleries, each below the other, and communicating by steps and gateways. The central dome is 50 feet in diameter; around it is a triple circle of seventy-two towers; and the whole building is 620 feet square and about 100 feet high. In the terraced walls are niches containing cross-legged figures larger than life, to the number of about four hundred; both sides of the terraced walls are covered with bas-reliefs crowded with figures carved in hard stone which must therefore occupy an extent of nearly 3 miles in length.
   The amount of human labor and skill expended upon the great pyramids of Egypt, sink into insignificance when compared with that required to complete this sculptured hill temple in the interior of Java.
   About 40 miles southwest of Samarang, on a mountain called Junong Prau, an extensive plateau is covered with ruins. To reach the temples, four flights of stone steps were made up to the mountain from opposite directions, each flight containing more than a thousand steps. Traces of nearly four hundred temples have been found here, and many (perhaps all) were decorated with rich and delicate sculptures. The whole country between this and Brambanam, a distance of 60 miles, abounds with ruins, so that fine sculptured figures may be seen lying in ditches, or built into the walls of inclosures.
   In the eastern part of Java, at Kediri, and in Melang, there are equally abundant traces of antiquity, but the buildings themselves have been mostly destroyed; sculptured figures, however, abound, and the ruins of forts, palaces, baths, aqueducts, and temples can be everywhere traced.
   The ruins of the ancient city of Majapahit cover miles of ground with paved roads, walls, tombs, and gateways, while sculptures of Hindu gods and goddesses of hard trachytic rock are found in the forests or in situ in temples. Some of the buildings are of brick of curious construction; the bricks are burned and built together without cement and yet adhere incomprehensibly.

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