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Thus spoke Phoebus' long-lived priestess; then 'But come now, she cries; 'haste on the way and perfect the service begun; let us go faster; I descry the ramparts cast in Cyclopean furnaces, and in front the arched gateway where they bid us lay the gifts foreordained. She ended, and advancing side by side along the shadowy ways, they pass over and draw nigh the gates.
Deeply interesting as is the subject of the architecture and the remarkable state of civilisation of the Aztecs, we must not dwell longer upon it, except to mention the cyclopean roads and bridges, constructed of huge blocks of stone, and carried on a continuous level, across valleys, which still remain.
Many of the almost inaccessible rocks, where the sons of Anak had built their Cyclopean fortresses, and which had been abodes of almost fabulous beauty and strength in the Herodian days, had been resorted to again by the crusaders, and had served as isolated strongholds whence to annoy the enemy.
The Cyclopean Isles strongly resemble, in their general aspect, the well-known Giant's Causeway on the northern coast of Ireland, and the Isle of Staffa off the western coast of Scotland. The latter, which, around its whole sea-girt outline, presents ranges of basaltic columns, some of them disposed in curious fantastic groups, most nearly resembles the Sicilian pair.
In a moment they all saw it, a single, pin-point glow, far back in the blackness, a Cyclopean eye, that swayed as it approached. Alternately it waned and brightened. Suddenly it illuminated the dim lineaments of a face. The face neared them.
Through the dancing, golden dust you discerned little of the ruined pile except some stately outlines, some huge blocks of building which looked as though reared by Cyclopean hands; and beyond the rock you but vaguely distinguished the discoloured, intermingled house-roofs of the old town.
I exerted myself with my long oar to give swift impulse to our skiff; and, while the waters splashed with melancholy sound against its sides, I looked with sad affection on this last glimpse of sea-girt England, and strained my eyes not too soon to lose sight of the castellated cliff, which rose to protect the land of heroism and beauty from the inroads of ocean, that, turbulent as I had lately seen it, required such cyclopean walls for its repulsion.
It belongs to the age of Herod; we see the same cyclopean stones, with the same surface draftings as at Jerusalem. Why Herod built this edifice seems clear. Hebron was the centre of Idumean influence, and Herod was an Idumean. He had a family interest in the place, and hence sought to beautify it.
Is there nothing of the picturesque in the long thin lines of gleaming steel, thrown across the countless miles of desert sand and alkali plain, and in the mighty mass of metal with its glare of cyclopean eye and its banner of fire-illumined smoke, that bears the conquerors of stubborn nature from side to side of the great continent?
As the trap is columnar, and the columns are horizontal in their direction, the joints of the polygons show along the surface of the ramparts, causing them to look like the work of Cyclopean builders. The Indians and Mexicans of the expedition, deceived by the similarity between these freaks of creation and the results of human workmanship, repeatedly called out, "Casas Grandes!
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