There
is their handwriting upon the temple wall, upon the granite slab
which has mocked at Time; but there is no man to decipher it.
There are the gigantic idols before whom millions have bowed;
there is the same vacant stare upon their features of rock which
gazed upon the multitudes of yore; but they no longer stare upon
the pomp of the glorious city, but upon ruin, and rank weeds, and
utter desolation. How many suns have risen and how many nights
have darkened the earth since silence has reigned amidst the
city, no man can tell. No mortal can say what fate befell those
hosts of heathens, nor when they vanished from the earth. Day
and night succeed each other, and the shade of the setting sun
still falls from the great Dagoba; but it is the "valley of the
shadow of death" upon which that shadow falls like a pall over
the corpse of a nation.
The great Dagoba now remains a heap of mouldering brickwork,
still retaining its form, but shorn of all its beauty. The
stucco covering has almost all disappeared, leaving a patch here
and there upon the most sheltered portions of the building.
Scrubby brushwood and rank grass and lichens have for the most
part covered its surface, giving it the appearance rather of a
huge mound of earth than of an ancient building.
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