120 TRAVELS IN UPPER 



pedestal. I had not the means of measuring its 

 height, and travellers who have gone before me 

 are not perfectly agreed on this point. Savary as- 

 signs to it a height of a hundred and fourteen 

 feet * ; whereas Paul Lucas, who declares he had 

 taken an accurate measurement of it, makes its 

 height no more than ninety-four feet -j~. This last 

 opinion was generally adopted by the Europeans 

 of Alexandria. The height of the colu .1 , was 

 admitted there to be from ninety-four to ninety- 

 five feet of France. The pedestal is fifteen feet 

 high; the shaft with the socle seventy feet; finally, 

 the capital, ten feet ; in all, ninety-five feet. The 

 mean diameter is seven Feet nine inches. Admit- 

 ting these proportions, the entire mass of the co- 

 lumn may be estimated at six thousand cubic feet. 

 It is well known that the cubic foot of red Egyp- 

 tian granite weighs a hundred and eighty-five 

 pounds. The weight of the whole column, there- 

 fore, is one million one hundred and ten thousand 

 pounds, eight ounces to the pound. 



However hard the substance of the column may 

 be, it has not escaped the corroding tooth of time. 

 The bottom o( the shaft is very much damaged on 

 the east side, and it is very easy to separate, on the 

 same side, thin laminae from the pedestal. It has 



* Letters on Egypt, vol. i. p. 36. 



f Journey of Paul Lucas, in 1714, vol. ii. p. 22. 



beeii 



