When it was built it was covered with a casing of stone, the different pieces being fitted together and polished to a surface like glass; but this covering has been torn away and the stones used for other purposes, which has left the pyramid in a series of two hundred and three rough and jagged steps, some of them being two feet and a half in height, growing less toward the top, but not diminishing with any regularity. The top is now a platform thirty-two feet and eight inches square. Each traveller who ascends this pyramid has from one to four Fellahs or Arabs, who pull him forward or upward by his arms, or push him and lift him from behind, and finally drag him to the top (Fig. 2). When he thinks of all the weary months and days of the twenty years during which it is said that those who built it worked, cutting out the stone in the quarries, moving it to the spot where it was required, and then raising it to the great heights and fitting it all in place, he regards his fatigue in its ascent as a little thing, though at the time it is no joke to him. [Illustration: FIG. 3.--VIEW OF GALLERY IN THE GREAT PYRAMID.] Many of the pyramids were encased in stone taken from the Mokattam Mountains, which were somewhat more than half a mile distant; but the pyramid of Cheops was covered with the red Syenite granite, which must have been quarried in the "red mountain," nearly five hundred miles away, near to Syene, or the modern Assouan. The interior of the pyramid is divided into chambers and passages (Fig. 3), which are lined with beautiful slabs of granite and constructed in such a way as to prove that at the remote time in which the pyramids were built Egyptian architects and workmen were already skilled in planning and executing great works. Of the seventy pyramids known to have existed in those early days, sixty-nine had the entrance on the north side, leaving but a single exception to this rule; all of them were situated on the western side of the River Nile, just on the edge of the desert, beyond the strip of cultivable ground which borders the river. [Illustration: FIG. 4.--POULTERER'S SHOP.] Near the pyramids there are numerous tombs, which are built somewhat like low houses, having several apartments with but one entrance from the outside. The walls of these apartments are adorned with pictures similar to this one of a poulterer's shop (Fig. 4); they represent the manners and customs of the ancient Egyptians with great exactness. [Illustration: FIG. 5.--ROCK-CUT TOMB, BENI-HASSAN.]