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Colossus of Rhodes. -Obelisks: Egyptian

The first obelisk mentioned in history was that of Rameses, king of Egypt, in the time of the Trojan war, which was forty cubits high; Phuis, another king of Egypt, raised one of fifty-five cubits; and Ptolemy Philadelphus, another of eighty eight cubits, in memory of Arsinoë. Augustus erected one at Rome, in the Campus Martius, which served to mark the hours on an horizontal dial, drawn on the pavement. They were called by the Egyptian priests, the Fingers of the Sun, because they were made in Egypt to serve also as stiles or gnomons, to mark the hours on the ground. The Arabs still call them Pharaoh's Needles; whence the Italians call them Aguglia, and the French Aiguilles. The famous obelisks called the Devil's Arrows, now reduced to three, the fourth having been taken down in the seventeenth century, stand about half a mile from the town of Boroughbridge, to the south-west, in three fields, separated by a lane, nearly two hundred feet asunder, on elevated ground, sloping every way. Mr. Drake urges many arguments for their Roman antiquity, and plainly proves them to be natural, and brought from Plumpton quarries, about five miles off; or from Tekly, sixteen miles off. The cross in the town, twelve feet high, is of the same kind of stone. The easternmost, or highest, is twenty-two feet and a half high, by four broad, and four and a half in girth; the second, twenty-one and a half by fifty-five and a quarter; the third, sixteen and a half by eighty-four. Stukeley's measures differ. The flutings are cut in the stone, but not through: the tallest stands alone, and leans to the south. Plot and Stukeley affirm them to be British monuments, originally hewn square. Dr. Gale supposed that they were Mercuries, which had lost their heads and inscriptions; but in a manuscript note in his Antoninus, he acknowledges that he was misinformed, and that there was no cavity to receive a bust.

On the north side of Penrith, in the church-yard, are two square obelisks, of a single stone each, eleven or twelve feet high, about twelve inches diameter, and twelve by eight at the sides; the highest about eighteen inches diameter, with something like a transverse piece to each, and mortised into a round base. They are fourteen feet asunder, and between them is a grave, which is inclosed between four semicircular stones, of the unequal lengths of five, six, four and a half, and two feet high, having on the outsides rude carving, and the tops notched. This is called the Giant's Grave, and ascribed to Sir Evan Cæsarius, who is said to have been as tall as one of the columns, and capable of stretching his arms from one to the other; to have destroyed robbers and wild boars in Englewood forest; and to have had an hermitage, called Sir Hugh's Parlour.

A little west of these is a stone called the Giant's Thumb, six feet high, fourteen inches at the base, contracted to ten, which is only a rude cross.