Waking up the morning after my first arrival, feeling cold, though the scene my eyes met was not quite so severely wintry as that just described, my dreams seemed to continue in reality. I beheld a tranquil plain different in its bright serenity from everything I had so far seen anywhere else, the Bimo temple rising to the left and the Arjuno group to the right, sharply outlined against the hills and the sky, their dark-gray colour in wonderful harmony with the verdure of earth and the blue expanse of heaven. One moment they appeared near in the clear atmosphere as if I could seize them with my hand, and then again very, very far, never to be approached. A vapour, clinging to the slope of the Pangonan in the direction of the Kawah Kidang, reminded me of the tremendous cosmic energy entering into the composition of this soothing stillness, this tonic for the sick and worried, with the certainty of annihilation as final pledge of freedom. Once a lake of seething lava, the plateau lies enclosed by the tops of five mountains, the Prahu, Sroyo, Bismo, Nogosari and Jimat, 2050 metres above the level of the sea; the Pangonan and Pagar Kandang are old eruptive cones, formed of the mud and sand thrown out, which accumulated at their bases and raised the surrounding ground. The plateau in its narrower sense is now a flat stretch of turf, in places, especially in the middle, a morass, called the Rawa Baleh Kambang for its northern, and the Rawa Glonggong for its southern part. Ruins have been found everywhere in the plain and up the slopes of the hills, even up to the summit of the Prahu. Here stand stone posts in a row, used by Arjuno, according to the legend, to tether his elephants, while his cows, after grazing on the Pangonan, were corralled for the night in the hollow of the Pagar Kandang, lit. “fence of the cattle-pen”; there, as in Diëng Kidool, layers of ashes among the slags and other debris, mark the situation in the past of the burning-grounds, which yield a steady harvest of bronze and gold finger-rings, bracelets, anklets and other objects of personal adornment. Ancient aqueducts, walls, staircases, foundations of secular buildings, clustered round the temples, remains of an important religious centre, so various and rich that Junghuhn did not exaggerate when calling them inexhaustible, suggest the existence, once upon a time, in those mountain wilds, of a Javanese Benares, minus the Ganges but plus a setting of unceasing volcanic activity, which demolished it by a sudden, violent outbreak. Such suggestions need only the seconding of one of the learned to be utterly ridiculed by his equally learned brethren of an opposite school.... We will let the matter rest at that and simply enjoy the actual calm of a landscape evidently exposed to destruction at the shortest notice, of nature recuperating from outrageous debauch.