direct course to the pyramids; although at other seasons of the year, when the river is higher, a considerable circuit is necessary, in order to cross the Bahr Yûsuf, the canal which runs parallel to the Nile. Even now the water in it was so deep, that we could not well pass it on donkies; but were carried over on the shoulders of Arabs from the adjacent villages. The pyramids, as seen from the river against the horizon, appeared enormously large; as we approached, their apparent magnitude continually diminished; and was nowhere less, than as seen from the foot of the rocky terrace on which they stand. This terrace is about one hundred and fifty feet above the plain; and the pyramids are thus seen only against the sky, without any surrounding objects from which the eye can judge of their relative magnitude. They seem here to be composed of small stones, and to have no great elevation. But as we approached their base, and became aware of the full size of the stones, and looked upward along their mountain-sides to the summit, their huge masses seemed to swell into immensity, and the idea of their vastness was absolutely overpowering. They are probably the earliest, as well as the loftiest and most vast of all existing works of man upon the face of the earth; and there seems now little room to doubt, that they were erected chiefly, if not solely, as the sepulchres of kings. Vain pride of human pomp and power! Their monuments remain unto this day, the wonder of all time; but themselves, their history, and their very names, have been swept away in the dark tide of oblivion.

We followed the usual course of visitors. We explored the dark passages of the interior; mounted to the summit of the great pyramid; and admired the mild features of the gigantic Sphynx, the body of which is again nearly covered by the drifting sand. We also

visited several of the adjacent tombs; and examined those which had then recently been cleared from the sand, under the direction of Col. Vyse.-The ascent of the great pyramid is less difficult, than a visit to its interior. The top is now a square platform of about thirty feet on each side, at an elevation of four hundred and seventy-four feet above the base. The view from it is very extensive; in front, Cairo and numerous villages, with their groves of slender palm-trees; in the rear, the trackless Libyan wastes; on the south, the range of smaller pyramids extending for a great distance along the edge of the desert; and then in boundless prospect, north and south, the mighty river, winding its way through the long line of verdure which it has won by its waters from the reluctant grasp of the desert upon either side. The platform is covered with the names of travellers, who have resorted hither in different ages from various and distant lands; and have here stood as upon a common and central point in the history of the world. Here too we found an American corner, with the names both of living and departed friends.

We left the great pyramids the same evening, and proceeded southwards along the edge of the desert to Sakkâra, where we slept; and the next morning visited the tombs in the neighbouring cliffs and the great necropolis around the adjacent pyramids. The whole tract here was anciently a cemetery. Pits leading to the chambers of death have been opened in every direction; and the ground is everywhere strewed with the bones and cerements of mummies. Such a field of dead men's bones, I have nowhere else seen. There can be little doubt, that all this long tract, from the pyramids of Gizeh to those of Dashûr, was once the

1) Wilkinson's Thebes, etc. p. 323.

great necropolis of ancient Memphis, which lay between it and the Nile.1

We now bent our course towards Mitraheny, near the river, where are the large mounds which mark the site of Memphis.2 These mounds of rubbish, a colossal statue sunk deep in the ground, and a few fragments of granite, are all that remain to attest the existence of this renowned capital. In Strabo's time, although partly in ruins, it was yet a populous city, second only to Alexandria; and in the days of Abdallatif there were still extensive ruins.3 In this instance the abodes of the dead have proved to be more lasting than the habitations of the living. But the total disappearance of all the ancient edifices of Memphis is easily accounted for, by the circumstance, that the materials of them were employed for the building of adjacent cities. Fostât arose out of the ruins of Memphis; and when that city was in turn deserted, these ruins again migrated to the more modern Cairo.-We crossed the river, and having visited the ancient quarries near Túra, from which the stones were cut for the pyramids, we returned to Cairo along the eastern bank.

A few words on the political and social condition of Egypt under its present ruler, Muhammed 'Aly, may close this introductory section. This extraordinary man, with native talents which in other circumstances might have made him the Napoleon of the age, accumulated in Egypt a large amount of wealth and power; but he has done it only for himself,-not for

1) Two of the pyramids of Dashûr are built of brick. We had often occasion to see both the ancient and modern bricks of Egypt. They are unburnt, and are made of the mud of the Nile mingled with chopped straw to bind it together; on the same principle that hair is sometimes used in making mortar.

has

up

the country, nor even for his family. He has built an army and fleet, not by husbanding and enlarging the resources of Egypt, but by draining them almost to exhaustion. The army consists chiefly of levies torn from their families and homes by brutal force. We saw many gangs of these unfortunate recruits on the river and around Cairo, fastened by the neck to a long heavy chain which rested on their shoulders. Such is the horror of this service among the peasantry, and their dread of being thus seized, that children are often mutilated in their fingers, their teeth, or an eye, in order to protect them from it.' Yet the country is now so drained of able-bodied men, that even these unfortunate beings are no longer spared. In the companies of recruits which were daily under drill around the Ezbekîyeh, we saw very many who had lost a finger, or their front teeth; so that an English resident proposed in bitter irony to recommend to the Pasha, that his troops should appear only in gloves. Indeed, it is a notorious fact, that this drain of men for the army and navy has diminished and exhausted the population, until there are not labourers enough left to till the ground; so that in consequence large tracts of fertile land are suffered to lie waste.

The same line of policy, or impolicy, has been pursued in the introduction of manufactures and schools of science. The sole object of the Pasha has been, not to benefit the nation, but to augment his own wealth, and increase the capability of the instruments of his power. With barbarian eagerness, he has overlooked the planting of the seed, and grasps only after

1) "There is now (in 1834) seldom to be found, in any of the villages, an able-bodied youth or young man, who has not had one or more of his teeth broken out, (that he may not be able to bite a VOL. I.

6

cartridge,) or a finger cut off, or an eye pulled out or blinded, to prevent his being taken for a recruit." Lane's Modern Egyptians, I. p. 246.

the ripe fruit. Not a step has been taken for the education and improvement of the people at large; but all the schools established are intended solely to train up young men for his own service. The workmen in the manufactories in like manner labour only by compulsion, and are recruited by force in the same manner as the soldiers. When once a manufactory of any article has been established by the Pasha, it is made a complete monopoly; and the people must purchase from him that article at his own price, or go without. Thus, not a family in Egypt dares to spin and weave the cotton stuffs which they wear upon their own bodies.

The people of Egypt, formerly the owners as well as the tillers of the soil, would seem to be an object of peculiar and wanton oppression to the government, or at least to its subordinate ministers. Whenever requisitions are made upon the people by the former, the latter are sure to extort nearly the double. By a single decree, the Pasha declared himself to be the sole owner of all the lands in Egypt; and the people of course became at once only his, tenants at will, or rather his slaves. It is interesting to compare this proceeding with a similar event in the ancient history of Egypt under the Pharaohs. At the entreaty of the people themselves, Joseph bought them and their land for Pharaoh, so that "the land became Pharaoh's;" but he gave them bread in return, to sustain them and their families in the time of famine. "Only the land of the priests he bought not;" but the modern Pharaoh made no exception, and stripped the mosks and other religious and charitable institutions of their landed endowments, as mercilessly as the rest. Joseph also gave the people seed to sow, and required

1) Gen. xlvii. 18-26.