CLEOPATRA'S NEEDIE.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2616, 28 May 1877, Page 2

CLEOPATRA'S NEEDIE.

The following is from the EcTo:—Our feminine readers who so deftly ply their needles may think that £10,Q0» is a very large sum to pay to remove 8 njedle from one country to another. Bu then the needle in question is nearly 7i> feet long, and is made, not of steel, bit of stone.'

Presented to the British Government as long ago as 1819, Cleopatra's.Needle hai been lying injthe sand at Alexandria because the British House of Commons has v always been too economical to pay for tho removal of the gift. It is at illustration of the power of female beauty that Cleopatra should have given her name to an obelisk made long before she was thought of. It is construited of the red granite from the quarries of Syene, aniis one of a pair of obelisks that originally stood at the door of the temple of the setting sun. But in Cleopatra's time it was removed to the temple, off Caesar at Alexandria, and from that date forward has borne the name of the conqueror conquering beauty. The land on which the obelisk lies was some time ago leased by the Egyptian Khedive to i Greek merchant, and as the great relic was in the way, and the owners would not remove it, it was covered up with sand. What the national Treasury would not .do, the resources of a private English gentleman arc about to accomplish. He has given £10,000 to pay the cost of the removal to London of this long-neglected present. The mode of doing this suggested by the.,, engineers is novel and ingenious. It is,^*-, in fact, nothing else than to enclose the ' big needle in a needle case, and in that way float it out of the, Mediterranean and up the Atlantic to the hyperborean shores. The sand is to-be dug away from the obelisk, and an iron cylinder- built round it. This cylinder is again to .be subdivided into watertight compartments, When this has been done, the whole con* cern is to be rolled into the sea,.in which. it will float like a huge cigar. The reserved man holes are then to be opened, and ballast enough to steady it is to be stowed away. A rudder, a mast, a light deck, anchor, chains, and pumps are to be attached; and in this way, under the convoy of a steam tug, the Pillar of the sungod in the preparation of which Hundreds of Egyptian slaves toiled 4000 years ago, is to be parried off in triumph to the Thames Embankment, where it is to be re-erected. It is an illustration of the economy of .modern engineering that £10,000 will cover the cost of the removal of this obelisk, while it cost £80,000 in

1833. to remove a similar one to Paris.