Every animal was either muzzled or shut up in a dark place.
There was not a light in the city, nor did a human being speak above a whisper.
Just before midnight the people retired, without breaking fast during the whole twenty-four hours.
In the dead watches of the night they communed silently with hordes of disembodied entities who had crossed the bridge which connects one phase of mind with desire, and the other with spirit. By this means the upward surging forces of the animal kingdom, are united with the downward cycling emanation of the Divine—the most profound myth associated with the Bridge of Kinevat.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE ARROW-HEAD MEMORIAL TO THE LOST MONBAS TRIBES
The legend of Humoo, or the Lost Arrow, associated with the Giant’s Thumb, one of the wonders of the Yo-Semite Valley, had its origin in the building of the enormous arrow-head in a triangular plateau two thousand feet above the level of the sea, in the ribbon-like convolutions of the San Bernardino Mountains, about six miles from the little village bearing the same name.
The Mexican hero, Santa Anna, is immortalized in the name of the valley stretching southward to the peaks of Temescal, where tin and other ore of value was being formed in nature’s laboratory, as Yermah and his men fashioned the arrow-head[[18]] which would serve as a memorial stone, an arrow-head burial for the lost Monbas tribes.
A circle intersecting Twin Peaks, in Tlamco, and including the North Dome, in the Yo-Semite, and the arrow-head, is exactly one fifth the diameter of the moon. The dual reference to the mind and to people, always ascribed to the influence of the moon, here found adequate expression in this giant monument. It commemorated the loss of a continent, the extinction of a race, and also pictured the mental anguish of the surviving nations.
The arrow, typical of thought, was composed of disintegrated white quartz on light gray granite, and it stands out bold and white against a dark background of entirely different soil. Short white grass and weeds cover the arrow-head proper, while dark shrubbery and trees mark the surrounding country. So perfect is its contour, so elevated its situation, it can be descried from every part of the valley, and is plainly visible at a distance of thirty miles.
So cunningly was the soil mixed for the molding of the arrow, that the ages since have not caused it to diminish, nor can it be made to support vegetation of a larger growth, or of species common to its surroundings.