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Updated: June 20, 2025
It was intended as a commercial post, and the wisdom and sagacity which Alexander manifested in the selection of the site, is shown by the fact that the city rose immediately to the rank of the great seat of trade and commerce for all those shores, and has continued to hold that rank now for twenty centuries. There was an island near the coast, opposite the city, called the island of Pharos.
The others were the Sir Joseph Banks, a small schooner-rigged vessel; the Patriot, a little sloop; and the Pharos lightship, a large clumsy-looking Dutch-built ship, fitted with three masts, at the top of which were the lanterns. It was intended that this vessel should do duty as a lightship until the lighthouse should be completed.
Landing on the rock became a matter of extreme difficulty, and the short period of work was often curtailed to little more than an hour each tide. The rolling of the Pharos lightship, too, became so great that sea-sickness prevailed to a large extent among the landsmen. One good arose out of this evil, however.
Suffice it to say that the work was fairly begun in the month of August, 1807; that a strong beacon of timber was built, which was so well constructed that it stood out all the storms that beat against it during the whole time of the building operations; that close to this beacon the pit or foundation of the lighthouse was cut down deep into the solid rock; that the men employed could work only between two and three hours at a time, and had to pump the water out of this pit each tide before they could resume operations; that the work could only be done in the summer months, and when engaged in it the men dwelt either in the Pharos floating light, or in one of the attending vessels, and were not allowed to go ashore that is, to the mainland, about twelve miles distant; that the work was hard, but so novel and exciting that the artificers at last became quite enamoured of it, and that ere long operations were going busily forward, and the work was in a prosperous and satisfactory state of advancement.
He accepted a livery from the city; on this point no blame was attached to him; but the colours of the livery were very gaudy. Perhaps the inventors of these bright shades had imagined, that the insignia of the first magistrate of the metropolis, in a ceremony, in a crowd, should, like the light from a Pharos, strike even inattentive eyes.
Another great fire was raging in the heart of the town, and anxiety for those on shore, for the time, overpowered the feeling of exultation at the victory that had been gained. At half-past ten a white flag was hoisted at the Pharos battery, and all on board watched, with deep anxiety, what was to follow.
The galley was approaching the flickering circle of light at the foot of the Pharos, and Archibius was just producing the token which was to secure the lifting of the chain, when his name echoed through the stillness of the night. It was Dion hailing him from a boat tossing near the mouth of the harbour on the waves surging in from the turbulent sea.
Misfortune to some natures is a pharos, which illumines to their eyes the dark low corners of social existence. Superior to her brother both in mind and energy, Brigitte had one of those natures which, under the hammer of persecution, gather themselves together, become compact and powerfully resistant, not to say inflexible.
Some have been so appropriate and altogether lovely that any pepper box contrivance thrusting itself out from the main walls and looking three ways for Sunday is supposed to be a bower of beauty, a perfect pharos of observation, an abundant recompense for unmitigated ugliness and inconvenience in the rest of the building.
Could not the headland jutting out beyond Sarzana into the Tyrrhene Sea be carved by his workmen into a Pharos? To transmute a mountain into a statue, holding a city in either hand, had been the dream of a Greek artist. Michael Angelo revived the bold thought; but to execute it would have been almost beyond his power.
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