National Geographic: Glories Of Angkor Page #2

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Despite such attacks on his

sensibilities,

Mouhot relished his journeys by

boat and even elephant

through uncharted regions of Siam,

and in time, to the frontier of

Cambodia.

He was warmly received by lesser

kings,

and met with enthusiastic curiosity

by all those unaccustomed

to having a farang, or white man,

parade into their midst.

Mouhot wasted little time on

making friends;

his goal was Science.

My principal object...

is to benefit those who in the quiet

of their homes

delight to follow the poor traveler

who with the sole object of being

useful to his fellow man...

crosses the ocean and sacrifices

family, comfort, health,

and all too often their life itself.

Nature has her lovers,

and those alone who have tasted

them know the joy she gives.

In the 19th century, the science of

natural history was in its infancy;

studying exotic species meant

shooting them,

or dunking them alive in jars of

spirits.

Mouhot's zoological treasure

included seven types of mammals,

ten reptiles, eight freshwater fish,

fifteen land shells, and a spider.

The spider still bears his name.

While Asia's animals enchanted

Mouhot,

its people bewildered him.

Their languages were gibberish to

his ears

- their religion had many spirits,

not one.

The people played music in alien

keys,

and filled their dances with

nightmarish creatures.

Yet the cultural divide that

separated Mouhot from his hosts

was about to be crossed... by the

most unlikely of people.

When Mouhot traveled throughout

southeast Asia,

he employed several helpers who

went with him.

Mouhot became attached to one

particular manservant called Phrai.

He even helped him with some of

his collecting.

He was a guide, he was an

interpreter, he said up the camp.

Phrai started out as a servant of

Mouhot,

but became his comrade and his

constant companion.

In fact we owe to Phrai our knowledge

of the expeditions of Mouhot.

On his expeditions

Mouhot kept meticulous records of

plants and animals,

and made charts of rivers and

mountains unheard of in Europe.

He cataloged the peoples he

encountered,

noting differences in their looks

and customs.

He turned himself into a one-man

research team.

And, in the tradition of great

explorers before him, he suffered...

Insects are in great numbers -

several of my books and maps have

been almost devoured in one night

We suffered terribly from mosquitoes,

and had to keep up the incessant fanning

to drive off these pestilent little

vampires.

There is a small species of leech...

you have to be constantly pulling

them off you by the dozens...

but you are sure to return home

covered in blood.

Scorpions, centipedes,

and above all, serpents, were the

enemies we most dreaded...

But remarkably, while Phrai and the

native bearers were frequently ill,

Mouhot's health couldn't

have been better.

I drank nothing but tea,

hoping by abstinence from cold

water from all wine and spirits,

to escape fever.

In spite of the heat, the fatigue,

and the privations inseparable

from such a journey,

I arrived among the Cambodians

in perfectly good health...

The people flocked to see my

collection,

and could not imagine what I should

do with so many animals and insects...

I offered the children my cigar-ends to smoke,

in return for which they would

run after butterflies

and bring them to me uninjured.

Once more in boats,

the Frenchman and his

companions journeyed north.

Their destination- the rumored

lost city of Angkor,

which interested Mouhot less than the

rare birds he hoped to collect there.

On the way they paused at a

lonely wilderness outpost

- a Catholic mission run by a

French priest.

Years of isolation, and dysentery,

had soured the priest's view of the

tropics,

and made him gloomy about

Mouhot's final push to the lost city.

Do you know where you're going?

The rains have begun and you are

going to almost certain death,

or will at least catch a fever,

which will be followed by years of

languor and suffering.

May God be with the poor traveler!

Mohout said he'd abide by God's will

but was going nonetheless.

After another leg of his river

journey

he reached a landmark he knew

only from legend

- the Ton LeSap Lake,

and marveled as the shorelines

grew apart by some five miles.

By now it'd been more than a year

since Mouhot had dined in

Bangkok's Royal Palace.

Rough travel had left him

ill-prepared

for what he was about to see,

a vision few Europeans had shared.

The lost city of Angkor was not a

rumor, but overwhelmingly real.

There are ruins of such grandeur,

remains of structures

which must have been raised at

such an immense cost of labor,

that at the first view, one is filled

with profound admiration,

and cannot but ask what has

become of this powerful race,

so civilized, so enlightened, the

authors of these gigantic works!

He came looking for insects,

came looking for flora, fauna,

new species.

He didn't come looking for

Angkor but he found it

and I think if any of us who may

have stumbled on Angkor as he did

would have been excited.

But whether we could have

recorded it in such detail

with such precision as Henri

Mouhot did is unlikely.

One of these temples... a rival to

that of Solomon,

and erected by some ancient

Michelangelo -

might take an honorable place beside

our most beautiful buildings.

It's grander than anything left to us

by Greece or Rome!

The natives enlightened the

stunned Mouhot-

it's the work of angels, they

said, or giants.

It was built by a magician-king.

It built itself.

Mouhot was not an archeologist,

nor an art historian, nor could he

read the Sanskrit engravings

that adorned the monuments of

Angkor.

Yet he was an illustrator.

With his customary zeal

he set out to sketch the most

magnificent

of the lost city's some 1,000 temples,

and describe them inch-by-inch.

The west side the gallery is

supported

by two rows of square columns,

on the east, blank windows have

been let into the wall,

with balconies of twisted columns

fourteen centimeters in diameter...

In the center of the causeway are

two elegant pavilions,

one on each side, having at each

extremity a portico

thirty-three meters sixty-six

centimeters in length...

Mouhot was a very keen observer.

He was a collector of information.

He had this natural history

background to describe things

in a very careful way.

So when he found the monuments

at Angkor,

he went ahead and approached them

in the same way he would

approach his zoological specimens,

with careful description.

The vaulted ceilings of the

galleries

are raised six meters from the

ground;

those of the second roof are four

meters thirty centimeters high...

The bas-reliefs represent combat

and procession...

Fabulous animals are busy

devouring some;

others are in irons and have had

their eyes put out.

He could tell that it was the results

of an ancient civilization

that had flourished in this area. He could also tell by the

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