The lofty palms have faded away and given place to forest trees, whose roots spring from the crumbled ruins; the bear and the leopard crouch in the porches of the temples; the owl roosts in the casements of the palaces; the jackal roams among the ruins in vain; there is not a bone left for him to gnaw of the multitudes which have passed away.

There is their handwriting upon the temple wall, upon the granite slab which has mocked at Time; but there is no man to decipher it.

There are the gigantic idols before whom millions have bowed; there is the same vacant stare upon their features of rock which gazed upon the multitudes of yore; but they no longer stare upon the pomp of the glorious city, but upon ruin, and rank weeds, and utter desolation.
How many suns have risen and how many nights have darkened the earth since silence has reigned amidst the city, no man can tell.

No mortal can say what fate befell those hosts of heathens, nor when they vanished from the earth.

Day and night succeed each other, and the shade of the setting sun still falls from the great Dagoba; but it is the "valley of the shadow of death" upon which that shadow falls like a pall over the corpse of a nation.
The great Dagoba now remains a heap of mouldering brickwork, still retaining its form, but shorn of all its beauty.