Page:Siam and Laos, as seen by our American missionaries (1884).pdf/58

 A road through the forest connects this once royal city with Nagkon Wat. Along this road a side-*path leads to an observatory, overgrown with shrubs and vines, standing on a terraced hill and commanding a wide view of the surrounding region.

The main entrance approaches the wat on the west, crossing by an immense stone causeway over a deep, wide moat and under a lofty gate-*way guarded by colossal stone lions hewn, pedestal and all, from a single block. The structure rises in three quadrangular tiers, of thirty feet, one above the other, facing the four points of the compass, on a cruciform platform. Out of the highest central point springs a great tower one hundred and eighty feet high, and four inferior corner-towers rise around. It has been suggested that Mount Menu, the centre of the Buddhist universe, with its sacred rock-circles, is symbolized, the three platforms representing earth, water and wind. Flights of steep stairways, each step a single block and some having fifty or sixty steps, lead from terrace to terrace. Long galleries with stone floors, stone roofs, and walls having a surface smooth as polished marble, covered with elaborately chiseled bas-reliefs, are flanked by rows of monolithic pillars whose girth and height rival noble oaks. The centre compartments are walled in, and the remaining two-thirds of the space consists of open colonnades. The inner walls of these open galleries have