LETTER IV.

Visit to the Pyramids - Pyramid of Cheops - Evening with Caviglia-Pyramids of Cephrenes and Mycerinus -Arab traditions respecting the Pyramids - The Sphinx, a talisman - Heliopolis - The Pyramids probably built by the Pali, or Shepherd-Kings of Egypt, afterwards the Philistines, in the time of Abraham.

TO MRS. JAMES LINDSAY.

Top of Cheops' Pyramid, Dec. 19, 1836.

DID you ever expect, my dear A——, to receive a letter from the top of the Great Pyramid? Here I am, and William at my side, a burning sun above us, and four halfnaked Arabs chattering around us, greatly marvelling, doubtless, at the magical propensities of the English. It is a fatiguing business climbing up, but, once here, all is repaid! Such a view! the desert on one side, stretching away into Libya-waves beyond waves, as

far as the eye can reach; the vale of Egypt on the other, green as if Hope had chosen it as her peculiar home, with a thousand little canals traversing it in every direction, left by the retiring Nile, for the inundation has scarcely yet subsided.

Caviglia is working here, and we are now his guests. He has palisadoed off a little citadel for himself, the chambers consisting of tombs excavated in the rock on which the Pyramids are built. After our descent, he is going to cicerone us through this monument of pride, science, or superstition — who knows which? It was building while Abraham was in Egypt; Joseph and his brethren must have seen the sun set behind it every day they sojourned in Egypt; it must have been the last object Moses and the departing Israelites lost sight of as they quitted the land of bondage; Pythagoras, Herodotus, Alexander, the Caliphs-it has been the goal of nations! lost nations have

pilgrimised to its foot, and looked up, as their common ancestors did before them, in awe and humility - and now, two strangers, from the "ultima Thule" of the ancients, Britain, severed from the whole world by a watery line, which they considered it impious to transgress, stand here on the summit, and, looking round, see a desert where once the "cloudcapt towers, the gorgeous palaces," the temples and tombs of Memphis arose in their calm beauty, and Wisdom dwelt among the groves of palm and acacia-solitary now and deserted except by the wandering Arab and his camel.

Midnight: Caviglia's Tomb. After dining with Caviglia, dear A-, to continue my yarn, we started by moonlight for the Pyramid, in company with the Genius. Loci, and duly provided with candles for exploration. I must premise that Caviglia, whose extraordinary discoveries you are doubt

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less well acquainted with, has just been set to work again by Colonel Vyse, Mr. Sloane, and Colonel Campbell, our Consul-General at Cairo. He is at present attempting to make further discoveries in the Great Pyramid, and, as soon as he gets a firman from the Pasha, intends to attack the others.

The shape of this Pyramid has been compared to "four equilateral triangles, on a square basis, mutually inclining towards each other till they meet in a point."* "Lincoln's-Inn fields, the area of which corresponds to its base, wholly filled up with an edifice higher by a third than St. Paul's, may give some idea of its dimensions."+

The entrance is on the northern face of the Pyramid, on the sixteenth step, though you can ride up to it, such immense mounds of fallen stones have accumulated at the base. A

* Greaves, Pyramidographia.

+ Conder, Modern Traveller-Egypt.

long, low passage, most beautifully cut and polished, runs downwards, above 260 feet, at an angle of 27 degrees, to a large hall, sixty feet long, directly under the centre of the Pyramid, cut out of the rock, and never, it would appear, finished. This was discovered by Caviglia; the passage, before his time, was supposed to end about half-way down, (2) being blocked up with stones at the point where another passage meets it, running upwards at the same angle of 27, and by which you might mount in a direct line to the grand gallery, and from that to the king's chamber, where stands the sarcophagus, nearly in the centre of the pile, were it not for three or four blocks of granite that have been slid down from above, in order to stop it up.

By climbing through a passage, forced, it is supposed, by the Caliph Mamoun, you wind round these blocks of granite into the passage, so that, with the exception of ten or twelve