"The man who built the pyramid was not there to meet us; he has been dead some time, how long we don't know exactly, but it is a good while. According to history the Great Pyramid was built by Cheops, one of the kings of Memphis, who belonged to the fourth dynasty, and ruled fifty years; Mariette assigns him to 4235 B.C., and Wilkinson to 2450 B.C. Either date allows him plenty of time to be dead, and for the correctness of Napoleon's remark to his soldiers at the Battle of the Pyramids, 'forty centuries look down upon you!' Three hundred thousand men were employed twenty years in its construction, and some authorities say it was not completed till after Cheops's death. When he had passed through the hands of the embalmers his mummy was taken to the inside of the pyramid, to the chamber prepared for it, and there stowed away. Let's go and see where it was. [Illustration: CUTTING AND SQUARING BLOCKS OF STONE.] "We descend the pyramid by the way we came, and in another quarter of an hour are on the ground again. Then we walk about half-way along the north face of the pyramid and some distance up the side to a hole about three and a half feet square, descending at an angle of twenty-six degrees. It is hot and wearisome to go inside the pyramid, and most persons say it is much worse than the ascent to the top. We go about sixty feet down an incline, then ascend at the same angle nearly three hundred feet, and finally come to an apartment called the King's Chamber; it measures thirty-four feet by seventeen, and is about nineteen feet high. The sides are of polished granite, and the only furniture is an empty coffin of stone, too large to be removed. "There is another room smaller than this directly beneath, and called the Queen's Chamber, and there are some other small rooms of no consequence. The dust chokes us, the heat threatens to melt us, the Arabs keep up a frightful din--ten times as bad as they do outside--and altogether we are glad to get out again. "The Arabs used to have the trick of taking away the lights, and leaving visitors in the black darkness, where they might easily become lunatics in a short time. They would stay away till they thought their victim was badly frightened, and then they shouted from the passage-way that they would only bring a light on condition of a heavy backsheesh. Many a person has been robbed in this way, and not a season passes without an outrage of this sort. Several times the government has been obliged to punish these rascals. They behave comparatively well for a short while after receiving punishment, but very soon they begin their outrages again. [Illustration: SECTION OF THE GREAT PYRAMID.]