In London, on the embankment of the Thames, standing majestic in its great height and solidity, is that wonderful column of red granite known to all as Cleopatra's Needle. What a history is attached to the obelisk, a history which is as wonderful and strange as the Needle itself is antique, for its age dates back as far as 1,500 years before the Christian Era. We are told that "the child Moses may have played around the foot of this pillar; the Israelites looking citywards from the brickfields saw the sunlight glittering on its tapering point; the plague of darkness clothed it as with a garment; the plague of frogs croaked and squatted on its pediment; the plague of locusts dashed themselves in flights against it, and unto its likeness the heart of Pharaoh was hardened. The sight of it takes us back to a time when the Pisgah--sight of Canaan--was but a promise with a desert and forty years between." Connecting the history of the pillar with such ancient Biblical facts as these, we realize how really aged the Needle is; but we have still to remember that it had been witness to events which took place many hundreds of years even before the days of Moses. When Thothmes III., called Egypt's greatest King, was in power he gave command for another pair of obelisks to be cut out of the quarries at Syrene and erected by the side of those already standing, which Rameses had set up before one of the many temples of the Sun which were in Heliopolis. Gazing thoughtlessly at the column one is prone to overlook the fact that this tremendous pillar is unlike other equally high columns in our land, as this one was not built up to its present height by stone being laid upon stone or block being placed upon block, until the desired height and form were attained, but from the first this was hewn out of its place in the quarry in one enormous mass. We can, therefore, understand the difficult undertaking it would be to remove such a weight of granite from one place to the other in the days when steam was not in use. The quarries of Syrene were seven hundred miles from Heliopolis. In an interesting book on this subject written by the Rev. James King (and to him I am indebted for much of this information), we have an account of how in those early times the task of cutting out and removing this column was effected.