Page:The Downfall of the Gods (1911).pdf/24

 up in its passage all with which it meets. They had poured down through Assam and Manipur; had invaded, ravaged, and abandoned the gracious garden-lands of Asia, which to-day are Burma and northern Siam; had subdued, spoiled, and enslaved its peoples, and had lashed whole populations to their victorious chariot-wheels. Nor, while the force of the inexplicable impulse that goaded them to wander remained unexpended, had any wealth or charm or natural beauty of the lands they traversed and ruined prevailed to turn or stay them; yet, in the end, like some mighty river that loses itself ingloriously amid stagnant marshes, they had found a final resting-place among the dreary forests of Kambodia, and on the shores of its mud-stained lake.

But the genius and the energy which had borne them triumphantly across half a continent, still demanded outlets; and the men who had conquered and destroyed upon so gigantic a scale set themselves now, no less greatly, to fashion and to create.

From the comfortless forest-lands they carved out for themselves an immense empire, and peopled it with the hosts they had reduced to bondage. They exacted tribute and allegiance from more than half the princes who ruled the petty kingdoms of south-eastern Asia. They converted the jungles about the margin of their lake into irrigated fields, whence annually they might draw enormous supplies of grain. They