Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/240

220 sun,—at the time when, as the Hindus say, "only Englishmen and dogs are abroad,"—reaching at last a pretty village and the grateful shade of tall kanari-trees, where the people were lounging at ease at the close of the morning's busy passer. Every house, shed, and stall had made use of carved temple stones for its foundations, and the road was lined with more such recha—artistic remains from the inexhaustible storehouse and quarry of the neighboring ruins. Piles of tempting fruit remained for sale, and brown babies sprawled content on the warm lap of earth, the tiniest ones eating the green edge of watermelon-rind with avidity, and tender mothers cramming cold sweet potato into the mouths of infants two and four months old. There was such an easy, enviable tropical calm of abundant living and leisure in that Lilliput village under Brobdingnag trees that I longed to fling away my "Fergusson," let slip life's one golden, glowing, scorching opportunity to be informed on ninth-century Brahmanic temples, and, putting off all starched and unnecessary garments of white civilization, join that lifelong, happy-go-lucky, care-free picnic party under the kanari-trees of Brambanam; but—

A turn in the road, a break in the jungle at one side of the highway, disclosed three pyramidal temples in a vast square court, with the ruins of three corresponding temples, all fallen to rubbish-heaps, ranged in line facing them. These ruined piles alone remain of the group of twenty temples dedicated to Loro Jonggran, "the pure, exalted virgin" of the Javanese, worshiped in India as Deva, Durga, Kali, or Parvati. Even the three temples that are best preserved have crumbled