What was "The Bridge of Light"?

In his 1929 novel "The Bridge of Light", author A. Hyatt Verrill tells the story of a man who discovers an unknown Mayan codex is a Spanish open-air market and pursues the location of a lost City in the Mesoamerican jungle. He finds that city and many marvelous secrets.



According to my sources, this is a fictionalized story of the discovery by Clark Savage Sr. of the Valley of the Vanished in 1910. He would later return with Hubert Robertson to arrange the transfer of some of the Mayan gold in the valley to the outside world where it would be invested in an international financial empire to prepare for the life work of Clark Savage Jr.


This is a truly amazing story with many weird elements. It is clear that the Valley of the Vanished was a much more exotic place than the Super Sagas let on. The High Mayan mentioned in They Died Twice was mostly likely the Mayan shaman who befriended Clark Senior and whose identity was kept secret even from Doc Savage.


One element in "The Bridge of Light" that is difficult to believe is the one that gives the story its title: the bridge of light. There is an underground cave through which the protagonist must travel to reach the inside of a pre-Mayan temple that is off limits to the inhabitants of the valley. In the story a volcanic vent generates a beam of light that is so hard you can walk on it! This allows the hero to safely cross teh underground abyss and find his way into the temple.

But of course this is absurd. You cannot walk on a beam of light. But my sources tell me that in fact there was a light that guided Clark Senior thorough the dangerous caverns and in fact illumined the path under his feet.


In the Naica mines in Chihuahua, Mexico, there are underground caverns that contain gigantic crystals which are big enough for a man to walk on. These caverns are 1200-feet underground and the size of large cathedrals. They are filled with giant crystals of selenite (gypsum) some of which are 4 feet in diameter and over 50 feet long. These crystals absorb and conduct light so that a light source on one end of the cavern will cause the crystals to glow on the other side of the cavern.



Note the miner at the left side of the picture to appreciate the scale. You can also see how the crystals capture the light.



A man can easily climb around on top of these crystals, some of which weigh over 50 tons. The crystals were formed by hydrothermal fluids emanating from volcanic magma chambers directly beneath them.



The inside of this cavern is very complex and hazardous. There are many pitfalls and broken crystals.




Here we see a miner walking along a crystal that has been illumined from within by an external light source.

My sources tell me that it was just such an interior illumination that made up the "bridge of light". There are similar caverns beneath the Valley of the Vanished but they are much larger than the ones in Mexico and very much older. The lattice-work of these crystals is supported over a crenelated bottomless pit filled with deep crevices, some of which still contain active vulcanism. Some part of the lattice lead to dead ends, some to broken columns that abruptly end over the abyss , and others to hazardous areas with poor footing deadly volcanic fumes.

Light from the volcanic vent in the Pre-Mayan temple illumined a series of crystals which were connected together and offered the only safe passage through this three-dimensional labyrinth. The "bridge of light" was a series of these illuminated crystals used by Clark Senior to make his way safely across the underground abyss.

I am told that what he found inside that Pre-Mayan temple was more than merely the volcanic vent that Verill mentions in his story. Could it have been an outpost of Taz, the sunken city from the Super saga The Mystery Under the Sea?In fact the "bridge of light" itself was a technologically designed artifact. There are many secrets that Clark Senior found there which assisted him in some of his later exploits. It provided the formula for the material out of which the blue dome of the Fortress of Solitude was constructed and the technique for polarizing the segments together with out any seams. It also gave him advanced medical techniques in neurosurgery which among other things helped him "rewire" criminal brains. And it provided him with medicinal formulas which helped to retard the aging process and enhance human performance. Clark Junior would not become privy to the true sources of this information until after his father's death though he had suspected for some time that his father had had such a hidden fount of knowledge.