The Weekly Butte Record

From Hon. E. Joy Morris's "Tour in the East."

A Night on the Pyramid of Cheops.

On landing at Gizeh, the pyramids, though several miles distant, appeared to be directly before us. In three hours, after a ride across the intervening plain, we arrived at the base of the rocky elevation on which the pyramids are erected. Here begins the descent, the pyramids marking the limit of cultivable land. A number of Bedouins, who live around the pyramids, came running to us and offered their service as guides. Ascending the rocky foundation of the pyramids, we stood at their base, and here, for the first time, we had some idea of their immense mass and size. Standing at the base of the great pyramid of Cheops, and looking up its sides, it seemed to lean against the sky. We were too eager to scale the summit to stand long at the base. We ascended at one of the corners. A Bedouin mounted upon a stone above extended his hand to the person ascending, while another aided him with a lift of his shoulders from below. The pyramids being built with receding layers of stone, a ledge of about three feet in width is left upon each layer, which affords a secure landing place. In this manner the ascent was easily made in fifteen minutes. Instead of an apex hardly wide enough to stand upon, we found the apex of the pyramid of Cheops a flat square at least fifteen feet broad. A large stone is in the centre, indicating that the original sharp apex of the pyramid has been destroyed, which of course has diminished its height. According to Herodotus, the pyramids were originally covered with a smooth coat of cement, which rendered it next to impossible to ascend them. The broken, jagged sides of the pyramids show that several attempts have been made to destroy them, a labor which one of the Arabian caliphs found a task equal only to the power of those who built them.

The view from the top of the pyramid of Cheops extends over the whole breadth of the valley of the Nile, from the Mokattam mountains back of Cairo, to the Libyan Desert. While we were on the pyramid the sun went down. My companions descended to sleep in tents at some distance on the plain, while I remained on the summit of the pyramid, having resolved to pass the night there. I retained the sheik of the Bedouins and two of his men, and sent down another to bring up the pipes and coffee I had brought from Cairo. The promise of a bucksheesh silenced their protestations and fears. The Bedouins kindled a fire with charcoal under the lee of the stone, and made me some excellent coffee after their manner.

The last rays of light were gradually fading from the horizon, and the landscape was every moment becoming darker and darker. On one side stretched a green plain, dotted with villages and clumps of palms; the bright crest of the Nile, gleaming in the expiring rays of the sun, and meandering through it in gentle curves relieved the dark green of the landscape.— Beyond, the minarets of Cairo were indistinctly seen, tipped with the departing light. Turning to the north, the eye ranged over the great desert of Libya, which stretched away a blank expanse of sand, upon which not a human being was to be seen. The solitude was as profound as that which reigned within the chambers of the pyramid beneath us. Across the plain, as day declined, the villages were indicated only by flitting lights and the baying of dogs.

By midnight the moon was in the Zenith, and the heavens presented a brilliant host of planets and stars, such as the old astronomers gazed upon from this very spot. The Bedouins were all asleep, so, burying myself in the folds of the Greek capote, I turned my back against the broken apex and fell asleep. The bull Apis, Cheops, the transmigration of souls, with speculations on Egyptian theology and ox-ology occupied my dreams, and I was engaged in a very interesting dispute with Herodotus touching the architects of the pyramids, when the Bedouin sheik awoke me, and told me that the sun was rising. The earth was yet robed in the twilight of morning.— The horizon, on its eastern rim, was streaked with pencilings of light, while the rest of the heavens was almost perfectly dark. As the sun approached the edge of the horizon, light shot around it; in a moment more the top of the sun's orb was visible, and instantaneously afterwards he wheeled up with a majestic bound, and poured a flood of light over heaven and earth. It was as magnificent as the first sun that rose upon the first morning, when "God said let there be light, and there was light." Immediately afterward, I descended and rejoined my companions, with no other unpleasant effect from my night's sleep on the top of the pyramid, than a purse lightened by a too liberal bucksheesh and a craving appetite.