United States or Oman ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Three ancient volcanos, still rumbling in blatant activity, loomed like gigantic monsters of the underworld, bulging their black shoulders above the earth. Before us lay a valley of green rice paddies. We had roved over ancient Boroboedoer all night, exploring its haunted crannies and corners, listening to its weird noises; dreaming through its centuries of age; climbing its seven terraces.
Boroboedoer is one of the wonders of the world, although little known. It is in the general shape of the pyramid of Egypt, but more beautiful. One writer says, "Boroboedoer represents more human labor and artistic skill than the great pyramids." Mr.
At dawn when we arose to see Boroboedoer by daylight they were still there as fresh as the dawn itself in their brown beauty, the dew of night glistening in their black hair and wetting their full breasts. And across, from Boroboedoer the sun, in its dawning splendor, was transforming belching and rumbling old volcanic Merapi into a cone of gold.
The night that we stayed up on the old temple of Boroboedoer, Merapi was unusually active; and now and then its flashes of flame lighted up the whole beautiful valley between the temple and the mountain.
Alfred Russel Wallace says: "The human labor and skill expended on Boroboedoer is so great that the labor expended on the great pyramid sinks into significance beside it." Boroboedoer was built in the seventh century A.D., by the Javanese under Hindu culture. Then came the Mohammedan invasion, destroying all such works of art in its pathway.
For fifty miles along the horizon, a trail of black smoke swept like the trail of black smoke which a train leaves in its wake on a still day. There was not another cloud in the eastern skies. Nothing but that trail of black smoke as we stood on the top of Boroboedoer at dawn and watched. Then something happened. It was, as if some magician had waved a magic wand back of the mountain.
Then there is beautiful Boroboedoer down in Java. It is a Physical Flash-Light that looms with its huge and mysterious historical architectural beauty like some remnant of the age when the gods of Greece roamed the earth. A sunrise from its pinnacled height I have already described, but the temple itself is unforgettable. There is nothing like it on the earth.
Mysterious with weird echoes of a past age it stands, silhouetted against a flaming sky to-night as I see it for the first time. It is late evening and all day long we have been climbing the ancient ruins of that magnificent age of Hindu culture on the island of Java. This temple of Boroboedoer was to be the climax of the day, and surely it is all of that. The fire dies out of the sky.
Word Of The Day