THE GREAT PYRAMID.

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to have been employed twenty years in building it. The four angles stand exactly in the four points of the compass, inducing the belief that it was intended for other purposes than those of a sepulchre. The entrance is on the north side. The sands of the desert have encroached upon it, and, with the fallen stones and rubbish, have buried it to the sixteenth step. Climbing over this rubbish the entrance is reached, a narrow passage three and a half feet square, lined with broad blocks of polished granite, descending in the interior at an angle of twenty-seven degrees for about ninety-two feet; then the passage turns to the right, and winds upward to a steep ascent of eight or nine feet, and then falls into the natural passage, which is five feet high and one hundred feet long, forming a continued ascent to a sort of landing-place; in a small recess of this is the orifice or shaft called the well. Moving onward through a long passage, the explorer comes to what is called the Queen's Chambers, seventeen feet long, fourteen wide, and twelve high. I entered a hole opening from this crypt, and crawling on my hands and knees, came to a larger opening, not a regular chamber, and now cumbered with fallen stones. Immediately above this, ascending by an inclined plane lined with highly polished granite, and about one hundred and twenty feet in length, and mounting a short space by means of holes cut in the sides, I entered the King's Chamber, about thirty-seven feet long, seventeen feet wide, and twenty feet high. The walls of the chamber are of red granite, highly polished, each stone reaching from the floor to the ceiling; and the ceiling is formed of nine large slabs of polished granite, extending from wall to wall. It is not the least interesting part of a visit to the interior of the pyramids, as you are groping your way after your Arab guide, to feel your hand running along the sides of an enormous shaft, smooth and polished as the finest marble, and to see by the light of the flaring torch chambers of red

granite from the Cataracts of the Nile, the immense blocks standing around and above you, smooth and beautifully polished in places, where, if our notions of the pyramids be true, they were intended but for few mortal eyes. At one end of the chamber stands a sarcophagus, also of red granite; its length is seven feet six inches, depth three and a half, breadth three feet three inches. Here is supposed to have slept one of the great rulers of the earth, the king of the then greatest kingdom of the world, the proud mortal for whom this mighty structure was raised. Where is he now? Even his dry bones are gone, torn away by rude hands, and scattered by the winds of heaven.

There is something curious about this sarcophagus too. It is exactly the size of the orifice which forms the entrance of the pyramid, and could not have been conveyed to its place by any of the now known passages; consequently, must have been deposited during the building, or before the passage was finished in its present state. The interior of the pyramid is excessively hot, particularly when surrounded by a number of Arabs and flaring torches. Leaving the King's Chamber, I descended the inclined plane, and prepared to descend the well referred to by Pliny. The shaft is small; merely large enough to permit one to descend with the legs astride, the feet resting in little niches, and hands clinging to the same. Having no janizary with me to keep them off, I was very much annoyed by the Arabs following me. I had at first selected two as my guides, and told the others to go away; but it was of no use. They had nothing else to do; a few paras would satisfy them for their day's labour; and the chance of getting these, either from charity or by importunity, made them all follow. At the mouth of the well I again selected my two guides, and again told the others not to follow; and, sending the two before me, followed down the well, being myself quickly followed by two others. I shouted to them to go back, but they paid no

OPPRESSIVE ATTENTIONS OF THE ARABS.

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regard to me; so, coming out again, I could not help giving the fellow next me a blow with a club, which sent him bounding among his companions. I then flourished my stick among them, and after a deal of expostulation and threatening gesticulation, I attempted the descent once more. A second time they followed me, and I came out perfectly furious. My friend was outside shooting, the pyramids being nothing new to him, and unfortunately I had been obliged to leave Paul at Cairo, and had no one with me but a little Nubian boy. Him I could not prevail upon to descend the well; he was frightened, and begged me not to go down; and when he saw them follow the second time, and me come out and lay about me with a club, he began to cry, and, before I could lay hold of him, ran away. I could do nothing without him, and was obliged to follow. There was no use in battling with the poor fellows, for they made no resistance; and I believe I might have brained the whole of them without one offering to strike a blow. Moreover, it was very hot and smothering; and as there was nothing particular to see, nor any discovery to make, I concluded to give it up; and calling my guides to return, in a few moments escaped from the hot and confined air of the pyramid.

At the base I found my friend sitting quietly with his gun in his hand, and brought upon him the hornet's nest which had so worried me within. The Arabs, considering their work done, gathered around me, clamorous for bucksheesh, and none were more importunate than the fellows who had followed me so pertinaciously. I gave them liberally, but this only whetted their appetites. There was no getting rid of them; a sweep of my club would send them away for a moment, but instantly they would reorganize and come on again, putting the women and children in the front rank. The sheik came ostensibly to our relief; but I had doubts whether he did not rather urge them on. He, however, protected us to a certain extent, while we went into one of VOL. I.-E

the many tombs to eat our luncheon. For a great distance around there are large tombs which would of themselves attract the attention of the traveller, were they not lost in the overwhelming interest of the pyramids. That in which we lunched had a deep shaft in the centre, leading to the pit where the mummies had been piled one upon another. The Arabs had opened and rifled the graves, and bones and fragments were still lying scattered around. Our persecutors were sitting at the door of the tomb looking in upon us, and devouring with their eyes every morsel that we put into our mouths. We did not linger long over our meal; and, giving them the fragments, set off for a walk round the pyramid of Cephrenes, the second in grandeur.

This pyramid was opened at great labour and expense by the indefatigable Belzoni, and a chamber discovered containing a sarcophagus, as in that of Cheops. The passage, however, has now become choked up and hardly accessible. Though not so high, it is much more difficult to mount than the other, the outside being covered with a coat of hard and polished cement, at the top almost perfectly smooth and unbroken. Two English officers had mounted it a few days before, who told me that they had found the ascent both difficult and dangerous. One of the Arabs who accompanied them, after he had reached the top, became frightened, and, not daring to descend, remained hanging on there more than an hour, till his old father climbed up and inspired him with confidence to come down.

A new attempt is now making to explore the interior of this pyramid. Colonel Vyse, an English gentleman of fortune, has devoted the last six months to this most interesting work. He has for an associate in his labours the veteran Caviglia, who returns to the pyramids rich with the experience of twenty years in exploring the temples and tombs of Upper Egypt. By a detailed report and drawing received by Mr. Gliddon (now in this country) from Caviglia himself,

and by private letters of later date, it appears that they have already discovered a new passage and another chamber, containing on one of the walls a single hieroglyphic. This hieroglyphic was then under the consideration of the savans and pupils of the Champolion school in Egypt; and, whether they succeed in reading it or not, we cannot help promising ourselves the most interesting results from the enterprise and labours of Colonel Vyse and Caviglia.

The pyramids, like all the other works of the ancient Egyptians, are built with great regard to accuracy of proportion. The sepulchral chamber is not in the centre, but in an irregular and out-of-the-way position in the vast pile; and some idea may be formed of the great ignorance which must exist in regard to the whole structure and its uses, from the fact that by computation, allowing an equal solid bulk for partition walls, there is sufficient space in the great pyramid for three thousand seven hundred chambers as large as that containing the sarcophagus.

Next to the pyramids, probably as old, and hardly inferior in interest, is the celebrated Sphinx. Notwithstanding the great labours of Caviglia, it is now so covered with sand that it is difficult to realize the bulk of this gigantic monument. Its head, neck, shoulders, and breast are still uncovered; its face, though worn and broken, is mild, amiable, and intelligent, seeming, among the tombs around it, like a divinity guarding the dead.