There is some interest in the comparison contained in the following figures. The Great Pyramid was originally 480 feet high. In consequence of the sacrilegious removal of its outer courses by the Caliphs to provide materials for the construction of the Mosk of Hassan, and other buildings at Cairo, its height has been reduced twenty feet, that is to 460 feet. It stands at the northern extremity of the valley of Egypt. The First Cataract is at the other, or southern extremity. These two extreme points of the valley are separated by a distance, following the windings of the river, of 580 miles. Throughout this distance the river falls on an average five inches a mile. This gives an uniformly rapid stream. To ascend this distance in a steamboat, such as are used on the Nile, requires seven days of continuous work; no time having been allowed for stoppages, except of course during the night. I need hardly say that the voyage is never accomplished in so short a time. But supposing a week has been spent in the ascent of the river, when, at the end of it, you land at the Cataract, you are at very little more than half the height you had reached when you were standing, at the beginning of the week, on the top of the Pyramid. So it would be supposing the Pyramid stood on the level of the river-bank, instead of standing, as it does, on a spur of the limestone ridge that overlooks the valley. To think, when you are entering Nubia, that a building in the neighbourhood of Cairo, so many hundred miles away, is still towering nearly 240 feet above your head, and that it has been there from an antiquity so remote that, in comparison with it, the most ancient monuments of Europe are affairs of yesterday, an antiquity that is separated from our own day by more than 5,000 years, makes one feel that those old Egyptians understood very well what they were about, when they undertook to set for themselves a mark upon the world, which should stand as long as the world endured. Judging from what we still see of the casing at the top of the Second Pyramid, we feel certain that, if the destroying hand of man had not stripped off its polished outer casing from the Great Pyramid, the modern traveller would behold it precisely as it was seen fifty centuries ago, when the architect reported to Cheops the completion of the work.

I have been speaking of the relation, in respect of height, of the Great Pyramid to the Cataract of Philæ only; it may, however, be noticed, for the sake of enabling the fireside traveller to picture more readily to his mind the peculiarity of the hypsometrical features of this unique country, that this Pyramid looks down, and always from a relatively greater height, on every part of the cultivated soil of the whole land of Egypt.