Volume 5 — From The Month. Ancor-Viat—A New Giant City.

If any would-be discoverer of ancient monuments is envious of the laurels of Mr. Layard and other celebrities of the same class, let him at once set out by the overland route, and make his way as fast as he can to Ancor-Viat. Few people have yet heard of it, but if what is said of it be true, it must be simply the most stupendous collection of magnificent monuments in the world. If the traveller in Central America, who, like Mr. Stephens, quits the beaten tracks and plunges into the depths of vast forests, is amazed at the ruins of Copan, Palenque, Uxmal, and Chichen, with their huge truncated pyramids, palaces, corridors, and sculptured bas-reliefs, he would, it seems, be still more surprised if he extended his researches to the Empire of Annam, and, advancing toward the utmost boundary of Cambodia, where it skirts Thibet, he came, mounted on an elephant, to the gigantic temples and forests of marble pillars which mark the site of which we speak. It was thus that a French officer in the service of the King of Siam recently visited the spot; and the account he has given of it may be found in the Revue de l'Architecture, and is in great part reproduced in the Revue Contemporaine of December, 1866. No European writer before him has ever mentioned it, and in reading his letters we must make allowances for possible exaggeration. He is a mandarin of the third class, and has obtained the rank of general in command of the Siamese army. M. Perrin (for such is his name) proposes revisiting Ancor-Viat with a complete photographic apparatus; and when he has done this, and had given us the pleasure of examining his photographs, we shall be better able to judge of his veracity. Meanwhile the editor of the Revue Contemporaine is of opinion that the clearness and simplicity of his account leaves little room for doubting its truth.

When M. Perrin first visited Ancor-Viat, he saw nothing of its ancient splendor; for in "Indian China," as in Central America, monuments of large dimensions and great beauty are often unknown to the people who dwell within a few hundred yards of them. The concourse of intelligent and wealthy travellers alone teaches ignorant natives the value of their own surroundings. On his second journey M. Perrin's attention was directed to the ruins by a curious circumstance. The King of Kokien pays a yearly tribute to the King of Siam in kind, and among the articles saltpetre figures largely. In the whole of India beyond the Ganges—in the Birman Empire, Siam, Malacca, and Annam—the people, children-like, have a passion for fireworks, and consequently consume a large quantity of saltpetre. Now the excrement of bats and night-birds that haunt in great abundance the cities of the dead furnishes, it seems, a copious supply of this substance, and is, in fact, as fruitful in the production of squibs and rockets as guano—the dung of Peruvian sea-birds—is in the cultivation of corn and rye. It is collected by malefactors who work in chains, and is dissolved in water mixed with ashes. After some days the water and ashes, with the macerated dung strongly impregnated with ammonia, is passed through tight sieves, and exposed in big caldrons to the action of huge fires. The entire substance then evaporates leaving behind it crystals of saltpetre. The East was famous of old for the manufacture of nitre; and we have all have noticed how it forms spontaneously on the walls of stables, slaughter-houses, cellars, and the like, from the decomposition of animal matter, and even from the breath and sweat of beasts.

No wonder M. Perrin was struck as a foreigner by the strange spectacle of convicts collecting bird-dung. The birds of night have a strong affinity for ruins, and crumbling towers and terraces are—to use an expression of Virgil's—

"Dirarum nidis domus opportuna volucrum."

It was along the northern part of the great city of Ancor-Viat that M. Perrin halted frequently to watch the culprits of Cambodia plying their foul task. During six days of elephant march he travelled on without coming to the end of the city. Here and there be penetrated into the ruins where explorers had opened a passage. No one, he says, would believe him if he told all be saw. The monuments, the palaces, the temples, the pillars, stairs, and blocks of marble pass description. The circle of the ruins was computed by the people of the country at ten or twelve leagues in diameter. Now considering that London, with its three millions of inhabitants, measures about eleven miles from east to west, and that Ancor-Viat by this calculation covered about three times as much ground, there must have been a pretty large concourse of human beings under the shadow of its colossal halls. It may have been the capital of an empire; it may have been an empire in itself. There, doubtless, as in the ancient cities of Mexico, the rich and the great dwelt in spacious edifices, with gardens and groves enclosed, while the poorer sort herded together in huts like those of the rudest tribes of Indians. There were no parliaments and philanthropic societies then to look after the dwellings of the poor; as space was no object in those days, they made up for straitened accommodation at home by plenty of spare room for building within the walls. Subaltern officers in the British army in Ceylon, who have surveyed that island of late years, report cities of enormous size, and covered in with jungle, as inviting excavation. Anarajaphpoorra, they tell us, must have been larger than London, and Polonarooa (be indulgent to the spelling, ye students of Cingalee!) contains statues of Anak height. The recumbent Buddha in the last of these two cities is 24 feet in length, and the Buddhist temples, built of a kind of granite, are huge in proportion. What bullock-power and elephant-power it must have required to move blocks of stone so unwieldy in an age when machinery and engineering were unknown! What thews must these Titans have had, before the time of eastern effeminacy, to build their towers of uncemented ashlars piled up like "Pelion upon Ossa"! M. Perrin assures us that he saw in Ancor-Viat temples in a good state of preservation, but overrun with weeds and shrubs, which measured a league in circuit. Pillars rose around him on every side, tall as cedars, and all in marble. The stairs, though partly buried under the soil, still mounted much higher than the noble flights one sees at Versailles or on the Piazza di Spagna at Rome. The buildings in some places were as solid as if they had been raised yesterday. According to local tradition, they are four or five thousand years old; and yet, but for lightning and the overgrowth of luxuriant vegetation, they would even at this day be perfect and intact. "Oh! that I had brought a photographic apparatus with me!" exclaims this traveller. "I assure you, whether you believe it or no, that the most famous monuments ancient or modern which we can boast of are mere sheds compared with what I have seen: our palaces, our basilicas, the Vatican, Colosseum, and the like, are just dog-kennels to it, and nothing more!"

If we had never heard of the Indian cities of Central America which the tribes are supposed to have deserted six or seven hundred years ago, when warned by their priests of the coming of the Spaniards, we might feel disposed to reject M. Perrin's account as no less fabulous than the travels of Baron Munchausen. But when we follow the steps of Captain Del Rio and Captain Du Paix, and still more those of Mr. Stephens in Chiapas and Yucatan; when we see them working their way through dense forests in Honduras with fire and axe, and arriving at a wall six hundred feet long and from sixty to ninety in height, forming one side of an oblong enclosure called the Temple, while the other three sides are formed by a succession of pyramids and terraced walls that measure from thirty to a hundred and forty feet in height, we are not easily repelled by any report of ancient cities merely because the measurements in it run very high. There was a phase in the history of civilization when half barbarous races who knew not the use of iron, delighted in constructing lasting monuments, and made up for beauty of detail by huge proportions, and for writing and hieroglyphics by picture-painting. M. Perrin may be guilty of great exaggeration, but we ought not to charge him with it too hastily. Modern research has more than verified all that the Spaniards vaguely reported of the cities of the West, where immense artificial mounds are crowned with stately palaces, and the dauntless industry of former races is proved by the provision they made for water supply in a dry and thirsty land—by the vast reservoirs for water which have been excavated, and are found to be paved and lined with stone—by the pits around the ponds intended to furnish supplies or water when the upper basin was empty in the height of summer—by the wells hidden deep in the rock, and reached by the patient water-carriers by pathways cut in the mountain to a depth or 450 feet, and conducting them to that depth by windings 1400 feet in length—by the long ladders, made of rough rounds of wood and bound together with osiers, up which the Indians carried, and still carry, on their backs from these deep sources the water requisite for the consumption of 7,000 persons or more, according to the size of the villages, during four months of the year—and by the subterranean chambers, which the Indians of old probably used as granaries for maize, and which were made, like the ingenious cisterns just spoken of, by slaves obedient to more intelligent masters. These and similar discoveries in America add a color of probability to the description M. Perrin has given of Ancor-Viat in Asia. At the same time we would rather he had not forgotten his photographic machine.

"I was anxious," he says, "to ascend to a temple that seemed tolerably perfect. There were eleven staircases, of I know not how many stairs each, to reach the first five only of peristyles! I began climbing at half-past six in the morning, and at half-past seven I had barely been able to examine two or three of the lower apartments. I was obliged to shorten my stay, fearing that I should have to descend the stairs while the sun was hot. All the walls are sculptured and ornamented. The first effect the ruins produced on me was that of stupefaction. Yet I am not a man to cry out with astonishment at trifles. The following day I went up by a winding staircase to the top of an immense tower situated on a height, from whence I enjoyed a good view of the surrounding remains. In hollows and parts where one cannot penetrate there are palaces of colossal height and grandeur. I had an excellent opera-glass, and could observe the details. An untold store of architectural treasures was before me, stretching as far as the frontier of Cambodia, which is ten or twelve leagues off! Just think what Paris would be in ruins. Heaps of stones and ashlars scattered over a surface no more than two or three leagues in diameter. Here there is on the ground, and under the ground, marble, already hewn, enough to build after the fashion of giants all the cities in the universe!"

This is indeed a climax; and one needs to pause and take breath before following M. Perrin any further up his winding stairs. Can we attach any credit to one who is so lavish in the use of words and figures? He has evidently a supreme disregard for nice distinctions, and ordinary measures of time and place. Marble enough in Ancor-Viat to build all the cities in the world? C'est un peu fort, M. Perrin. But let us hear him to the end. We can believe a good deal about cities excavated or still underground, for we have seen several such with our own eyes; but credulity itself has its limits. "I saw," M. Perrin continues, "the leg of a statue the great toe of which measured eleven times my fowling-piece in the length. It is in marble, like the rest of the figure; there is no other stones here used for building, except colored stones, which are employed as borders or for the eyes of statues. There are pedestals with flights of steps, of which the crowning images have disappeared, as high and as large as St. Germain l'Auxerrois. Fancy octagonal pyramids cut short at half their proper height—all in marble, recollect. Who the devil raised all this? If it was some famous dynasty, it cannot be very well satisfied with the oblivion into which it has fallen, in spite of its sumptuous monuments. What are the ruins of Palenque, or even Thebes with its hundred gates, or of Babylon, compared with this unknown city without history and without name?"

Now, setting aside Thebes and Babylon, it may be well to compare what we really know of Palenque with the general's singular account of Ancor-Viat. It is more than a hundred years since the Spaniards first heard of it from the Indians, and the reports of its extent differ as widely now as they did then. The natives say the ruins cover an area of sixty miles; Du Paix and Del Rio seven leagues; and Waldeck about three miles. But though travellers are not agreed as to their extent, they are quite unanimous as to the remains themselves. All admit that they are "unique, extraordinary, and mournfully beautiful." The largest building is on a mound forty feet high, raised by the hands of man, originally faced with stones, and measuring 310 feet by 260 at the base. It is richly adorned with paintings in the style proper to the ancient cities of Mexico; the corridors are sumptuous, the flights of steps broad, and the figures of giant proportions, uncouth and expressive of suffering. The tallest statue, however, that has been discovered is only ten feet six inches high, by which it appears that the stone figures of Mexican Indians were dwarfish compared with the huge heroes and idols of the East. M. Perrin had been questioned about the existence of religious monuments in the eastern Peninsula of India, and the answers which he returned are as follows: "Sacred stones are found here. Some of them are simply rocks which at some period or other were sufficiently soft to receive very clearly the impressions of the feet of men and animals. Of this sort the one most highly venerated is that of the Buddhist monastery at Phrabat. An immense number of pilgrims visit it annually. Others are enormous monoliths raised on socles roughly quarried. If there ever were any inscriptions, they have been effaced. I have also seen here gateways or arches of triumph built of huge stones laid one upon another. What giants or what machines moved these immense blocks? They stand alone. Not a vestige of any building is near them. Sometimes there are not even any quarries to be found within a great distance. I saw two such monuments as those I now speak of among the Stiengs, when I conducted a military expedition against them. They stood in the midst of marshy and almost impassable forests, and had certainly never before been seen by any European. Some of the people of Laos had spoken to me of these remains, but I very nearly missed seeing them. The difficulties in the way of getting to them were so great that at first I did not think they would be worth the trouble. But they amply repaid me. I examined them most carefully with a powerful glass. They did not appear to bear any inscriptions. Even the luxuriant vegetation of the tropics had been unable to disjoint them. What roots could rend asunder these stones laid one upon the other without cement, and raise so heavy a weight? The side-supports were, I believe, as high as the top-stone laid across was long. The soil is evidently raised by the vigorous growth that marks the vegetation of these forests. These remains must rest on monolith socles or on the rock, or on gigantic foundations; for the ground on the surface is so soft and wet that you may easily thrust a cane into it up to the handle."

When M. Perrin inquired of the natives who reared these monuments, they replied the Gai; and by the Gai they meant some barbarous white men, who came from the land of perpetual snow, who were as tall as three Siamese, and whose fingers and toes, though articulated, were not separate from one another. They rode on horses double the size of those now seen, but bones of which are often found in the earth. Impious men were these Gai; they hunted elephants, and feasted on their flesh; they offered sacrifices of blood to their gods. Chinese merchants informed the general that monuments of the same huge description are to be found in the north and west of China, and that the people there call them "giants' stones." The traveller in Central America is, we know, sometimes amazed to find monstrous blocks evidently hewn by the hands of men, yet hundreds of leagues distant from any calcareous strata. Men in the neighborhood who are learned in other matters are quite at fault when their opinion respecting them is asked. Some will tell you that the nature of the soil is changed from what it was before the conquest, and others that the Incas had means of transport unknown to us. Probably there are quarries of granite under the surface of the savannas; but how the Indians could extract the stone without gunpowder or machinery is a problem we are unable to solve.

Important discoveries are not always due to scientific and discerning men. The earliest accounts of anything new and surprising are likely to be overdrawn; but they are not the less valuable from this circumstance. Their very exaggeration may stimulate inquiry, and thus be an advantage rather than otherwise in the outset. It was a poor Tungusian fisherman who discovered the most perfect specimen of the mammoth near the mouth of the river Lena, nearly seventy years ago, and his sale of the creature's tusks for fifty rubles led to an accurate knowledge of the monster's structure and habits, as well as to a great extension of the trade in ivory derived from mammoths' tusks. General Perrin's testimony appears to us well worthy of attention, in spite of its being highly colored here and there. It may, on the whole, fall far short of the reality, and may lead to the solution of questions of importance in oriental history.