Now, as the business of standing mast-heads, ashore or afloat, is a very
ancient and interesting one, let us in some measure expatiate here.
I take it, that the earliest standers of mast-heads were the
old Egyptians; because, in all my researches, I find none prior to them.
For though their progenitors, the builders of Babel, must doubtless,
by their tower, have intended to rear the loftiest mast-head in
all Asia, or Africa either; yet (ere the final truck was put to it)
as that great stone mast of theirs may be said to have gone by
the board, in the dread gale of God's wrath; therefore, we cannot
give these Babel builders priority over the Egyptians. And that
the Egyptians were a nation of mast-head standers, is an
assertion based upon the general belief among archaeologists,
that the first pyramids were founded for astronomical purposes:
a theory singularly supported by the peculiar stairlike formation
of all four sides of those edifices; whereby, with prodigious long
upliftings of their legs, those old astronomers were wont to mount
to the apex, and sing out for new stars; even as the look-outs of a
modern ship sing out for a sail, or a whale just bearing in sight.
In Saint Stylites, the famous Christian hermit of old times,
who built him a lofty stone pillar in the desert and spent the whole
latter portion of his life on its summit, hoisting his food from
the ground with a tackle; in him we have a remarkable instance
of a dauntless stander-of-mast-heads; who was not to be driven from
his place by fogs or frosts, rain, hail, or sleet; but valiantly
facing everything out to the last, literally died at his post.
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