FROM THE TOP OF CHEOPS.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2646, 11 February 1908, Page 7

FROM THE TOP OF CHEOPS.

j I took a donkey for my ride to the great pyramid of Cheops, and went clear around it, climbing up the stones here and there to see how it was made. I have gone to the top and made notes of the desert as it stretches out for mifles on three sides and also of the valley of the Nile, which with its teeming millions is in view not far away. The top of the pyramid is about thirty feet square. It is as big as a good-sized parlour and is one of the most interesting roof gardens known to man. As I sat there I could see the work going on in the sands below me, and I repeopled them with the men now being dug up under the superintendence of our Americans. In my mind's eye I could see them as they toiled here over 4000 years ago I could see them dragging the great blocks over the road of polished stone, which had been made for the purpose, and observe the sweat rolling down their dusty faces under this blazing sun of Egypt as, under the lashes of their taskmasters, the great pile grew. There was an army of them. About one hundred thousand men worked three months of every year for more than 20 years on this construction, and Herodotus says that the onions, garlic, and radishes which the labourers ate cost 1,750,000 dollars. If that was the price of relishes, what must the real food have cost ? How much must have been spent on clothing and how much on tools ?

The great pyramid was composed of 2,200,000 separate blocks of stone It covered 18 acres and still contains more than 8,000,000 cubic yards of solid masonry, taking out the chambers within it. Its perpendicular height is now just below that of a 45-storcy flat, allowing ten f(*?t to each storey ; it is within 100 feet of the height of the Washington Monument, provided you do not count the aluminium-tip of the latter. These stones of which the pyramid is built are of different sizes. Some are as big as a flat-topped office desk and some are so high that you require two men to pull you onward as you climb from terrace to terrace.

I am told that old Cheops weighs something like 5,000,000 tons ; so much that if the blocks were torn apart and loaded on waggons it would take something like 10,000,000 horses, or more than half of all the horses in the United States, to drag it off lo the sea.

| For such an undertaking the stones* | would have to be broken to pieces. j There arc few of them which do not | weigh at least two tons and some of i the large blocks which cover the king's chamber, inside the structure, weigh sixty tons. As measured in climbing up it there are about 200 courses, and the blocks vary in height from two to five feet. It is estimated that the great pyramid contains all told, almost 90,000000 cubic feet of limestone. This is so much that if it could be split into flags, four inches thick, it would furnish enough to make a pavement two feet wide reaching over sea and land clear around the globe. When Cheops completed this great structure he coated the outside with limestone and granite slabs. The sides were as smooth as glass ; they met in a point at the top and the length of each side was 18 feet longer than it is now. The pyramid was a great deal higher, and as the bright sun played upon its polished surface it must have formed a magnificent sight. The outside coating has b"*n long since torn away. Throughout the ages the people of the Nile valley have been getting their building | stone from it. Many of the mosques j of Cairo contain pieces of old Cheops and it has been the quarry of this | part of the world for generation ; alter generation these thousands of j years.

As it is to-day, when one views it from afar the great pyramid still looks like a smooth block of stone. 11 is only when one comes closer that one sees that it as mad" of many blocks, and only when he stands beside it or attempts to climb it that lie appreciates the enormous size oH the blocks.

The pyramid is built of yellow limestone and conglomerate. The stones are piled one on the other in regular layers. There is no cement between them, but they are chinked with a rough mortar which has withstood the weather for more than 4000 years. I dug at some of this mortar with my knife, but .could not loosen it, and went from block to block allong the great structure on the side, facing the western desert, finding the mortar everywhere solid. —"Boston Globe."