166 JAVA. [chap. vn. 



four nights of stone steps were made up the mountain 

 from opposite directions, each flight consisting of 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 Brambauam, a distance 

 of sixty miles, abounds with ruins ; so that fine sculptured 

 images may be seen lying in the ditches, or built into 1 

 the walls of enclosures. 



In the eastern part of Java, at Kediri and in Malang, 

 there are equally abundant traces of antiquity, but the 

 buildings themselves have been mostly destroyed. Sculp- 

 tured figures, however, abound ; and the ruins of forts, 

 palaces, baths, aqueducts, and temples, can be everywhere 

 traced. It is altogether contrary to the plan of this book 

 to describe what I have not myself seen ; but, having been 

 led to mention them, I felt bound to do something to call 

 attention to these marvellous works of art. One is over- 

 whelmed by the contemplation of these innumerable 

 sculptures, worked with delicacy and artistic feeling in 

 a hard, intractable, trachytic rock, and all found in one 

 tropical island. What coitld have been the state of society, 

 what the amount of population, what the means of sub- 

 sistence which rendered such gigantic works possible, will, 

 perhaps, ever remain a mystery; and it is a wonderful 

 example of the power of religious ideas in social life, that 



