ANCIENT KINGDOM. 109 



facing them. When we turned from these to the 

 silent and ruined structures around us, a new 

 interest was called up. The imagination became 

 busy in restoring their fallen glories, in picturing 

 large cities, adorned with temples and palaces, seated 

 on the plain, and in recalling the departed power, 

 wealth and state of the native kingdom that once 

 flourished in a land so noble, so beautiful, and so 

 well adapted for its growth and its security. 



That such a kingdom once existed is evident, 

 not only from the detached ruins in so many sepa- 

 rate parts of the valley, and the piles of brick in 

 the forests, but from the ancient brick causeways 

 still used as the principal roads of the country, and 

 the ruins of large brick walls that are said to 

 stretch from the southern side of Mount Kawi to 

 the sea, fortifying the valley of Kediri, and thus 

 defending the principal access to the plains of Ma- 

 lang from the west. Any one of these structures 

 is far beyond the powers of the present inhabitants, 

 if left to themselves, and bespeaks a people among 

 whom civilization and the arts had made no mean 

 progress, and had had no short or temporary ex- 

 istence. Whatever may have been the history of 

 the people, it is entirely unknown, and scarcely 

 mentioned even by tradition. A few dates, indeed, 

 have been discovered on ruins in other parts of the 

 island, which, from their style and character, seem 

 to have been contemporaneous with these, ranging 

 from the year 1195 a.d. to a.d. 1296; and a few 



