ONGCOR THE GREAT.*

HENRI MourtoT belongs to a class of travellers very rare in England, but very valuable,—the savans who travel not to describe or enjoy, but to acquire and to diffuse knowledge. A teacher, * Travels in/ado-China, Cambodia, and Laos. By Henri Hotiliot London Murray.

and the son of a teacher, he resided ten years in Russia as a "professor," and acquired among other things a good knowledge of Russian, and a profound hatred of the social and political system of the empire. Quitting the country on the outbreak of the Crimean War, he visited England, sustaining himself as a photographer, and then retired to Jersey to devote himself to the smaller departments of natural history. Au English book placed in his hands, however, excited in him a passionate desire to visit the great Asiatic peninsula which divides the British possessions from China. The Geographical Societies found the funds, and he succeeded in traversing Siam, Laos, Cambodia, and other regions almost or quite unknown to Europeans, and was about to explore North-Western China when he fell a victim to a fever, 10th November, 1861. These volumes are the rough notes of his travels, only partly corrected, and want something of the life and vigour he would doubtless have communicated to them. They are, however, though somewhat bald, full of observation conveyed with the true lucidity of a Frenchman. The narrative from its excessive barrenness is not interesting, bat it is simple, and leaves on readers, the majority of whom, like ourselves, are probably unacquainted with Siam, the impression of conscientious accuracy.

By far the most valuable chapter and the most considerable addition made by M. Mouhot to our knowledge is the account of Ongcor, the ancient capital of Cambodia, a city full of ruins so vast and so finished as to suggest the former presence of a highly civilized race ; but we must not pass by altogether his account of Bangkok, the capital of Siam. This city is built on a river, which seems to have excited M. Mouhot's warm admiration, the Menem, or, as English geographers generally spell it, the Melt:atm, '• Mother of Waters," a really magnificent river, so deep that the "largest vessels can coast along its banks without danger." It contains from three to four hundred thousand inhabitants, at a guess which M. Mouhot believes, but which is probably exag- gerated, and may be shortly described as an Asiatic Venice. "Whether bent on business or pleasure you must go by water. In place of the noise of carriages and horses, nothing is heard but the dip of oars, the songs of sailors, or the cries of the Cipayes (Siamese rowers). The river is the high street and the boulevard, while the canals are the cross streets, along which you glide, lying luxuriously at the bottom of your canoe." The ships float into the very centre of the town, and the larger houses are all approached from the water's edge. M. Mouhot had the honour of an interview with the Kings, of whom there are two, bearing to each other much the relation of the Augustus and Cas3ar of the later ages of Rome. The two were supposed to reign with a co-ordinate though unequal authority; but M. Mouhot discredits this political theory. He says the second King, though he has an army and establishment of his own, is really only the first subject, can spend no money without the first King's consent, and has no privileges except exemption from the duty of prostration when the Sovereign enters. The state- ment is valuable as clearing up an error, but as a matter of fact we believe the second King, like the Ctesar, is always the heir apparent, is invested with "sanctity,"—i. e., cannot publicly be sentenced by his Sovereign, is personally absolute, has power of life and death, is entitled to a voice in affairs, and, when an able man, exercises many of the functions of a Prime Minister. Just at present both he and his brother, the first King, are white-washed Asiatics, i. e., men who have studied European learning and acquired many European ideas, but remain Oriental sovereigns nevertheless.

Aided by the Catholic missionaries and Royal favour, M. Mouhot penetrated to Cambodia, the State east of Siam, also governed by a first and second King, and also very aquatic, and there reached, or we might say discovered, Ongcor, the ancient capital, lying on the Mekon, in about 14 deg. north lat., and 104 deg. east long. (Greenwich), one of the least visited and least explained spots of earth. The kingdom is now an unimportant section of a remote peninsula, its best provinces comprised in a worthless French colony; yet this ancient capital, unnamed in good maps like Professor Keith Johnston's or those of M. Petermann, is full of ruins which seem like the work of giants, is approached, for example, by this kind of engineers' work :—" From the north stair- case, which faces the principal entrance, you skirt, in order to reach the latter, a causeway 747 feet in length by 30 feet in width, covered or paved with large slabs of stone, and supported by walls of great thickness. This causeway crosses a ditch 715 feet wide, which surrounds the building ; the revetment, 10 feet high by n feet thick, is formed of ferruginous stone, with the exception of the top row, which is of freestone, each block being of the same thickness as the wall." The description is so bald as to be almost unintelligible, but it is assisted by a sketch, and from the two we gain the idet of a temple constructed " of three distinct parts raised on terraces one above the other," all of stone, all on the scale of Luxor, and all profusely orna- mented with bas-reliefs, some of exceeding elegance. "Time build- ing forms a square, each side of which is fifty-six metres sixty centimetres, and at each angle is a tower. A central tower, larger and higher, is connected with the- lateral galleries by colonnades covered, like the galleries, with a double roof; and both galleries and colonnades are supported oo .a base 3} feet from the floor of the interior courts." This central tower is 150 feet from the base of the building, all stone, all p .oftisely orna- mented.

"What strikes the observer with not less admiration than the grandeur, regularity, and beauty of these majestic buildings, is the immense size and prodigous number of the blocks of stone of which they are con- structed. In this temple alone are as many as 1,532 columns. What means of transport, what a multitude of workmen, must this have required, seeing that the mountain out of which the stone was hewn is thirty miles distant ! In each block are to be seen holes 24 centi- metres in diameter and 3 in depth, the number varying with the size of the blocks; but the columns and the sculptured portions of the building bear no traces of them. According to a Cambodian legend, these are the prints of the fingers of a giant, who, after kneading an enormous quantity of clay, had cut it into blocks and carved it, turning it into a hard and, at the same time, light stone by pouring over it some marvellous liquid. All the mouldings, sculptures, and bas-reliefs appear to have been executed after the erection of the building. The stones are everywhere fitted together in so perfect a manner that you can scarcely see where are the joinings ; there is neither sign of mortar nor mark of the chisel, the surface being as polished as marble. Was this incomparable edifice the work of a single genius, who conceived the idea, and watched over the execution of it ? One is tempted to think so ; for no part of it is deficient, faulty, or inconsistent. To what epoch does it owe its origin ? As before remarked, neither tradition nor written inscriptions furnish any certain information upon this point; or rather, I should say, these latter are as a sealed book for want of an interpreter; and they may, perchance, throw light on the subject when some European saves shall succeed in deciphering them."

The work must either have occupied generations — always an improbable supposition in Asia — or it must have been executed by a sovereign having at his disposal resources in- finitely exceeding those now existing in the entire penin- sula. The architect can be accounted for. The phenomenon of a genius differing not only in degree but in kind from his fellow men, surpassing them as angels might surpass Englishmen, is not unfrequent in Asia, and not quite unintel- ligible. Such a man once recognized would be so completely freed from all restraints, whether of convention, or creed, or humanity, or social pressure, or lack of artificers, that he would be sure

to execute something which seemed superhuman in magnitude as well as ability ; no European, for instance, even if he had con-

ceived the Taj Mehal—the Italian story is visible rubbish— would have found either the means or the audacity to execute a work which required a subject population. But granting the architect, whence the artificers? Siam and Cambodia together could not repeat the building, Cambodia has not six mil- lions of people, and we are driven back on that most cer-

tain yet most disheartening of theories that the races who could build structures like these could yet utterly pass away, that there are many Baalbecs, that in fact there is no security whatever visible to man for the permanence of civilization. The race who built Baalbec cannot erect a decent village, why should not the race who built the railways live one day

amid the ruins they are unable to keep up ? Christianity ? The people who built Palmyra lived this side of the Christian era, and Antioch was once Christian.

This temple, moreover, is no isolated building. Round and

near it are others almost 'as great, a mountain covered with columns, an arch of towers 40 feet high, a pagoda of 37

towers, one of 135 feet high and 70 feet in diameter, connected by a maze of galleries covered with bas-reliefs, a place full of sculptured blocks and statues, a treasury of sixteen towers, all deeply carved, and all of atone. The city itself, Ongcor- Thom, Ongcor the Great, is surrounded by a wall of sandstone, such as no contractor on earth would now undertake to build.

"The outer wall is composed of blocks of ferruginous stone, and extends right and left from the entrance. It is about 24 miles

square, 11 feet thick, and 22 feet high, and serves as a sup- port to a glacis which rises almost from the top. At the four cardinal points are doors, there being two on the east side. Within this vast enclosure, now covered with an almost im- penetrable forest, are a vast number of buildings, more or less in

ruin, which testify to the ancient splendour of the town. In some places, where the heavy rains have washed away the

soil, or where the natives have dug in search of treasure, may be seen immense quantities of porcelain and pottery." Who built all that ? Local tradition says, "The Leprous King," and then is silent. In the year 3000 will any one know who cut the Box Tunnel ? Had M. Mouhot lived, these wonderful ruins would have probably been described as they are worth describing. As it is, we must wait for the saran whom Napoleon ILL will one day intrust with the task of copying this glorious testi- mony to the progress of French arms. Meanwhile, M. Mouhot's account, to all who love to hear of the marvellous and specu- late on empires which have passed away, is worth the price of his two volumes, and the labour, for it is a labour, of wading through them.