As we step outside, our eyes are blinded by the burning light inundating the valley, the fiery furnace ablaze at the foot of mountains flaming up to the sky, a terror of beauty: Think of the fire that shall consume all creation and early seek your rescue, said the Buddha. It speaks to us of the cataclysm which shook Java on her foundation in the waters and upset the work of man, killing him in his thousands and burying his temples, the Mendoot and many, many more, under the ashes of her volcanoes, some such upheaval as when the conflict began between the Saviour of the World and the Great Enemy, to quote from the sacred scriptures; when the earth was convulsed, the sea uprose from its bed, the rivers turned back to their sources, the hill-tops fell crashing to the plains; when the day at length was darkened and a host of headless spirits rode upon the tempest. Though the ground has also been raised by the drift down the slopes of the Merapi, by the overflowing runnels discharging their load of mud into the Ello and the Progo, the magnitude of volcanic devastation can be gauged from the difference in level between the base of the _chandi_ and the site of the _kampong_ higher up, under which the platform extends whereon its subsidiary buildings stood. Excavations in the detritus have already resulted in the discovery of portions of a brick parapet once enclosing the temple grounds; of vestiges of smaller shrines in the east corner of the terrace and of a cruciform brick substructure to the northeast with fragments of bell-shaped _chaityas_;[133] of a Banaspati, probably from the balustrade of the staircase, and detached stones with and without sculptured ornament, which revealed the former existence of several miniature temples surrounding the central one. At the time of my last visit (which came near terminating my career in my present earthly frame, through the rotten scaffolding giving way under my feet when ascending to the roof), more than half of the space conjecturally encompassed by the parapet, still awaited exploration, and since then restoration, within the limits of the scanty sums allowed, seems to have superseded excavation. In connection with both, the names should be mentioned of P. H. van der Ham, who did wonders with the little means at his disposal, and C. den Hamer, who showed that the decoration of the Mendoot too was not completed before the great catastrophe which devastated Central Java and stopped architectural pursuits.[134]