The "blockhouse" image of San Tomé, a military one, aptly recurs
here in the chapter where the mine becomes a military force. But the description
is applied to the mountain itself, not to the "faint tracings" of the
mine, so it also applies symbolically to the Ideal. "Cyclopean" suggests
both gigantic (continuing the image of the mountains as a land of giants) and
monocular; the two words together paint the Ideal as gigantic, single-minded,
and militaristic.