might have been its original construction, the impression made by the sight of it is, that it was a solid pile, composed in the interior of unburnt brick, and perhaps earth or rubbish; that it was constructed in receding stages, and faced with kilnburnt bricks having inscriptions on them, laid in a very thin layer of lime cement; and that it was reduced by violence to its present ruinous condition.

The

upper stones have been forcibly broken down, and fire has been employed as an implement of destruction, though it is not easy to say how or why. The facing of fine bricks has been partly removed and partly covered by the falling down of the mass which it supported and kept together. "A still later traveller, Mr.

is of opinion that the traces of four stages are clearly

discernible.

"As to Major Rennell's doubt whether the ruin I was artificial, Mr. Rich observes that, so indisputably evident is the fact of the whole mass being from top to bottom artificial, that he should as soon have thought of writing a dissertation to prove that the Pyramids are the work of human hands as of dwelling upon this point. The Birs-i-Nimrúd,' he

adds.

is, in all likelihood, at present nearly in the

state in which Alexander saw it, if we give any credit to the report that ten thousand men could only remove the rubbish, preparatory to repairing it, in two months. If, indeed, it required one half of that number to disencumber it, the state of dilapidation must have been complete.

66 6

The immense masses of vitrified brick which

are seen on the top of the mound appear to have

marked its summit since the time of its destruction. The rubbish about its base was probably in much greater quantities, the weather having dissipated much of it in the course of so many revolving ages; and possibly portions of the interior facing of fine brick may have disappeared at different periods.'"

49

CHAPTER IV.

THE PYRAMIDS AS GRANARIES.

THE land of Shinar, with its desolate tower, the marvellous prototype of the Great Pyramid of Jeezeh, passed from one conqueror to another; and when the descendants of the Prophet Mohammed became rulers of the east and west, the Caliph Al Mamoun, in the year A.D. 820, came from Bagdad to El Fostat, an earlier Cairo, and determined to enter the largest Pyramid and examine its contents, for he believed from the reports brought to him that it contained untold treasures. He ordered his Mohammedan workmen to begin at the middle of the northern side of the Great Pyramid. These men worked on unceasingly by night and by day. Weeks and months were consumed in these toilsome exertions; so persevering, however, were they, that, though progressing slowly, they at length penetrated no less than one hundred feet in depth from the entrance. By that time, they were becoming thoroughly exhausted, and began to despair of the hard and hitherto fruitless labour, when one day they heard a great stone fall evidently in some hollow space within not more than a few feet on one side of them. In the fall of that particular stone

there seems to have been somewhat more than an accident.

They instantly pushed on in the direction of the strange noise. Breaking through a wall surface, they burst into the hollow way, very dark and dreadful to look at, and difficult to pass. It was the inclined and descending entrance-passage of the Pyramid, where the Romans and others passed up and down in their occasional visits to the subterranean chamber and its unfinished, unquarriedout floor.

A large angular-fitting stone, that had been for ages, with its lower flat side, a smooth and polished portion of the ceiling of the inclined and narrow entrance-passage, quite undistinguishable from any other part of the whole of its line, had now dropped on to the floor before their eyes, and revealed that there was just behind it the end of another passage, clearly ascending therefrom towards the south. That ascending passage itself was still closed a little further up by a portcullis or stopper, formed by a series of huge granite plugs, of square wedge-like shape, dropped or slid down, and then jammed in immovably from above. To break this in pieces within the confined space, and pull out the fragments there, was entirely out of the question; so the workmen broke through the smaller ordinary masonry, and thus up again by a huge chasm-still visible, and used by visitors into the interior—to the ascending passage, at a point past the terrific hardness of its lower granite obstruction. They found up there beyond the portcullis the passage-way still blocked, but the filling material at that part was only lime

The

stone; so, making themselves a very great hole in the masonry along the western side, they there wielded their tools on the long blocks which presented themselves to their view. But as fast as they broke up and pulled out the pieces of one of the blocks in this ascending passage, other blocks, also of such a size as to completely fill it, slid down from above, and where there should have been free passage there was still an obstruction of solid stone. men despair; but the Caliph, being present, insists that, whatever the number of stone plugs still to come down from the mysterious reservoir, his men shall hammer and hammer them, one after the other, and bit by bit, to little pieces, at the only opening where they can get at them, until they at last come to the end. So the work goes on, till at length the ascending passage, beginning just above the granite portcullis, leading thence upward and to the south, becomes free from obstruction.

On they rush, up one hundred and ten feet of the steep incline, crouching hands and knees and chin together, through a passage of polished white limestone, forty-seven inches in height and forty-one in breadth. They suddenly emerge into a long high gallery, all black as night and in death-like silence; still ascending, they see another low passage. On their right hand is the dark, ominous-looking mouth of a deep well, in which not even at a depth of more than 140 feet is the water reached; while onwards and above them is a continuation of the gallery leading them on.

The way was narrow, not more than six feet broad anywhere, and contracted to three feet at the floor,