C 439 ] 
By my menf. the capital of the pillar is 
The Shaft > ■— » 
The Bafe . 
The Pedeftal — . 
Height from the Ground — — — 
Its Diameter — - 
F. In. 
9 7 
66 i 
5 9 
IO 5 
8 <L> 
£<3 
4- CS 
* <L> 
92 O 
9 1 
As foon as I faw this fill-prizing pillar, I was con- 
vinced that, if it had been eretfted in Pompey’s time, 
Strabo, or fome of the ancients, would have men- 
tioned it : I therefore determined to examine it nar- 
rowly. I perceived too that the pedeftal was of a 
bad and weak mafonry, compofed of fmall and 
great ftones of different forts, and abfolutely unable 
to fuftain fo great a weight ; 1 therefore eaftly con- 
cluded fuch pedeftal not originally belonging to the 
pillar. I attempted to get out a ftone, which I did 
without trouble, and difcovcred the pedeftal to be 
hollow. After fome time, I mean during the courle 
of many days, I made an opening wide enough to 
enter it ; when within it, you will judge how much 
I was furprized to find this prodigious mafs of gra- 
nite, flood, as on a pivot, on a reverfed obelifk, as 
I then believed it was, only five feet fquare; curious 
to know the length of the obelifk, I began to move 
the earth on one of its fides, but my furprize in- 
creafed much when I found, after moving a few 
inches of the foil, that the obelifk was not entire, this 
pivot being only four feet and one inch thick. It is 
l'eated on a rock ; the ftone is of an extreme hard- 
nels, 
