At the same time we would rather he had not forgotten his photographic machine. "I was anxious," he says, "to ascend to a temple that seemed tolerably perfect. There were eleven staircases, of I know not how many stairs each, to reach the first five only of peristyles! I began climbing at half-past six in the morning, and at half-past seven I had barely been able to examine two or three of the lower apartments. I was obliged to shorten my stay, fearing that I should have to descend the stairs while the sun was hot. All the walls are sculptured and ornamented. The first effect the ruins produced on me was that of stupefaction. Yet I am not a man to cry out with astonishment at trifles. The following day I went up by a winding staircase to the top of an immense tower situated on a height, from whence I enjoyed a good view of the surrounding remains. In hollows and parts where one cannot penetrate there are palaces of colossal height and grandeur. I had an excellent opera-glass, and could observe the details. An untold store of architectural treasures was before me, stretching as far as the frontier of Cambodia, which is ten or twelve leagues off! Just think what Paris would be in ruins. Heaps of stones and ashlars scattered over a surface no more than two or three leagues in diameter. Here there is on the ground, and under the ground, marble, already hewn, enough to build after the fashion of giants all the cities in the universe!" {138} This is indeed a climax; and one needs to pause and take breath before following M. Perrin any further up his winding stairs. Can we attach any credit to one who is so lavish in the use of words and figures? He has evidently a supreme disregard for nice distinctions, and ordinary measures of time and place. Marble enough in Ancor-Viat to build all the cities in the world? _C'est un peu fort, M. Perrin._ But let us hear him to the end. We can believe a good deal about cities excavated or still underground, for we have seen several such with our own eyes; but credulity itself has its limits. "I saw," M. Perrin continues, "the leg of a statue the great toe of which measured eleven times my fowling-piece in the length. It is in marble, like the rest of the figure; there is no other stones here used for building, except colored stones, which are employed as borders or for the eyes of statues. There are pedestals with flights of steps, of which the crowning images have disappeared, as high and as large as St. Germain l'Auxerrois. Fancy octagonal pyramids cut short at half their proper height--all in marble, recollect. Who the devil raised all this? If it was some famous dynasty, it cannot be very well satisfied with the oblivion into which it has fallen, in spite of its sumptuous monuments. What are the ruins of Palenque, or even Thebes with its hundred gates, or of Babylon, compared with this unknown city without history and without name?"