Suppose that it were discovered that in the language of old Egypt the word for a sepulchral monument meant literally a heap of stones, should we not be justified by the known history of the power words have over thought, in feeling certain that in those early times there could not have been a man in Egypt capable of forming any other conception of a sepulchral monument? We have some little ground for presuming that something of the kind was at work in the minds of the builders of the Pyramids. The force, that is to say, of words, as well as the force of tradition, may have constrained them to adopt the pyramidal form. At all events, we know that the word pyramid may mean the mountain, perhaps the mound, perhaps really the cairn, the heap of stones. CHAPTER VIII. THE GREAT PYRAMID LOOKS DOWN ON THE CATARACT OF PHILÆ. Now I gain the mountain’s brow, What a landscape lies below!—DYER. 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,