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I need not speak of the similarity of many religious rites and beliefs existing in Hindostan and among the inhabitants of Mayab. What to think, effectively, of the types of the personages whose portraits are carved on the obelisks of Copan? Who would not take them to be pure aborigines if they were seen in Yucatan instead of Madras, Elephanta and other places of India.
Another thought had made his heart pulse faster and more joyously as he saw in the distance the pylons and obelisks of Tanis; for on countless marches through the silent wilderness and in many a lonely camp he had beheld in imagination a virgin of his own race, whom he had known as a singular child, stirred by marvellous thoughts, and whom, just before leading his troops to the Libyan war, he had again met, now a dignified maiden of stern and unapproachable beauty.
By now night had fallen, and the great moon, rising from the earth as it were, poured her flood of silver light over the desert, the mountains, the limitless city of Thebes, and the wide rippling bosom of the Nile. The pylons and obelisks, glittering with copper and with gold, towered to the tender sky. In the window places of palaces and of ten thousand homes lamps shone like stars.
Round-arched openings for bells occur on each side, and within the crowning balustrade with its obelisks a stone dome rises to an eight-sided domed lantern. Like all the church, the front is built of beautiful limestone, rivalling Carrara marble in whiteness, and seen down the narrow street which runs uphill from across the small praça the whole building is most imposing.
And the Egyptian obelisks that stand in several of the piazzas put even the Augustan or Republican antiquities to shame. I remember reading in a New York newspaper an account of one of the public buildings of that city, a relic of "the olden time," the writer called it; for it was erected in 1825!
The smallest of these unhewn obelisks it was about fifty feet high marked the resting-place of Umsuka; and deep into its granite Owen with his own hand had cut the dead king's name and date of death, surmounting his inscription with a symbol of the cross. Towards this pillar Hokosa made his way through the wet grass, followed by Noma his wife.
Another of these bastard obelisks occupies a commanding position at the top of the Spanish Stairs, in front of the Church of Trinita dei Monti. It stood originally on the spina of the circus of Sallust, in his gardens, and is covered with hieroglyphics of the rudest workmanship, which sufficiently proclaim their origin, as a Roman forgery probably of the period of the Antonine emperors.
A glance along the summit toward the highest group showed us that any advance in that direction was impossible, for the thin ridge was gashed down in notches three or four hundred feet deep, forming a procession of pillars, obelisks, and blocks piled upon each other, and looking terribly insecure.
Archaic sculptures, obelisks, and gateways, massive and undecorated, recall the architecture of Egyptian sanctuaries, but no record exists which throws any light on the origin of the extensive monuments of a forgotten past, though the triple pyramid of Mount Lawu is still a place of sacrifice to Siva the Destroyer.
The snow was so abundant that since that period there has never been seen such a prodigious quantity in France. In different parts of Paris pyramids and obelisks of snow were erected with inscriptions expressive of the gratitude of the people.
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