Where five residencies--Samarang, Pekalongan, Banyumas, the Bagelen and the Kadu--meet between two seas, the wonderland of the Diëng links the eastern and western chain of volcanoes which are the vertebrae of Java’s spine. The Diëng plateau, the first part created, as tradition goes, and destined to remain longest above water in the island’s final destruction and submersion, is nothing but a huge crater. Nature, in her most mysterious mood, exercises here a charm of a peculiar character, well expressed by the name, according to the Javanese derivation from _adi aëng_, _i.e._ marvellously beautiful.[22] The temples in this region belong to the oldest and finest if by no means the largest of Java. The discovery of a stone with a Venggi inscription has led to the conjecture that the Hindu settlement to which we owe them, originated from the Priangan; other indications point to immigration directly from Southern India. However this may be, the dates ascertained (one in an inscription reproduced by me in 1885 for further examination at Batavia, leaving the stone in the place where I had found it) from 731 Saka (A.D. 809) on, witness to the lost civilisation of the Diëng having reached its apogee at the time the Abbassides flourished in Baghdad and the Omayyads in Cordova. How it rose, declined and fell, we do not know. For four centuries its memory lived only as a fantastic tale, the Diëng remaining utterly deserted, a wilderness of mountain and forest, inhabited by devils and demons of the Khara and Dushana type.