480 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL chap. 



that the destroying effect of tropical vegetation has only 

 been acting on them for that short period. 



The mode of construction of these buildings is thus 

 described by Ferguson, whose long-continued personal 

 study of Indian architecture constitutes him an authority 

 of the first rank. He says : — 



"Nothing can exceed the skill and ingenuity with which the 

 stones of the roofs are joggled and fitted into one another, unless it 

 is the skill with which the joints of their plain walls are so polished 

 and so evenly laid without cement of any kind. It is difficult to 

 detect their joints even in a sun-picture which generally reveals flaws 

 not to be detected by the eye. Except in the works of the old 

 pyramid-building Egyptians, I know of nothing to compare with it. 

 When we put all these things together, it is diflicult to decide 

 whether we ought most to admire the mechanical skill which the 

 Cambodian architects displayed in construction or the largeness 

 of conception and artistic merit which pervades every part of their 

 designs." 



The stone used in the construction of these temples 

 and palaces is a fine grained sandstone, so hard and 

 compact as to take a polish ; and as no lime or cement 

 was used, and the joints are so wonderfully close, there was 

 little opportunity for seeds to vegetate except in the 

 hollows of the ornamental carving of the numerous 

 turrets, where the view shows a considerable growth of 

 dwarf vegetation. Some of the surrounding cloisters and 

 perhaps other parts of the building seem to have been 

 wilfully destroyed, perhaps at the time of the Siamese 

 conquest, and in such broken portion forest trees have 

 grown, and their roots penetrating among the foundations, 

 have so loosened them that some of the towers have been 

 destroyed. Delaporte tells us that one turret fell while 

 he was encamped there, and he thinks that unless 

 protected the whole building will soon be irretrievably 

 ruined. It is to be hoped, however, that the French 

 government will see that this magnificent ruin is carefully 

 preserved for future generations. Great numbers of other 

 ruins in about fifty distinct sites, are scattered over a 

 district extending for 400 miles in a north and south 

 direction and 200 miles east and west, occupying nearly all 

 of Cambodia with portions of Siam and Cochin China. 



