Starting one bright morning at 7 o’clock in an open barouche, with Jūseph Hakè as dragoman, a tall stately Egyptian as coachman, with the imperial buttons on his coat, for he was formerly in the service of Ismail Pasha, and an Arab runner to clear the passage through the narrow and crowded Cairo streets, we drove in the fresh morning air over the arched stone bridges of the Nile, with their bronze lions, the gift of France, and on smooth, straight avenues lined with lebeck trees, until we had accomplished the ten miles which lie between Cairo and the Pyramids. Barricades of corn-husks enclosing heaps of yellow corn, and the busy, dark-skinned huskers were a noticeable feature by the roadside. We could not look at a child without his little hand was extended with the call for _backsheesh_, and sometimes our carriage was followed by half a dozen girls and boys whose cries, when they got short of breath in running, would be simply “’sheesh, ’sheesh.” Our first view of the Pyramids of Gheezeh was over the lebeck trees and corn-husks, and they seemed close at hand, although then five miles away. Among the three pyramids of Gheezeh the pyramid of Cheops, or the “Great Pyramid,” is by far the most important. It is _the_ pyramid as the mysterious Sphinx at its base is _the_ sphinx. It is probably the oldest, and certainly the largest building in the world. Egyptologists differ widely in their chronology. Mariette puts the building of Cheops’s pyramid back to B. C. 4235, Brugsch to B. C. 3733, while Piazzi Smyth places it in the age of Abraham and Melchisedek, B. C. 2170.