My visit to the pyramids I will now describe, dear mother, although in a letter to the Princess Thamonda I have given a very full account of it. Accompanied by the hierarch and a few young lords--his friends and mine--we rode in chariots out of the gate of the city, passed the guards, who made obeisance to the high-priest, and entered upon an avenue (what noble avenues are everywhere!) of trees growing upon a raised and terraced mound which bounded each side of it. The mound was emerald-green with verdancy, and the color of the foliage of the palms, acacias, and tamarisk trees was enriched by the bright sunshine as seen through the pure atmosphere. At intervals we passed a pair of obelisks, or through a grand pylon of granite. Then we came to a beautiful lake--the Lake of the Dead--where we passed a procession of shrines. Every nome and all large cities have such a lake. I will here state its use, which, like every thing in Egypt, is a religious one. It is connected with the passage of the dead from this world to the next; for the Egyptians not only believe in a future state, but that rewards or punishments await the soul. When a person of distinction dies, after the second or third day his body is taken charge of by embalmers, a class of persons whose occupation it is to embalm the dead. They have houses in a quarter of the city set apart for this purpose. Here the friends of the dead are shown three models of as many different modes of embalmment, of which they choose one, according to the expense they are willing to incur. "The most honorable and most costly," said the high-priest to me, as we were surveying the Lake of the Dead, towards which a procession was moving from the city, when we came before it, "is that in which the body is made to resemble Osiris. And a custom prevails among us, that the operator who first wounds the body with the sharp embalming flint, preparatory to embalming, is odious by the act, and is compelled to take to flight, pursued with execrations and pelted with stones. No doubt the man we saw flying out of a house this morning, as we passed, was one of these incisors." The body remains seventy days, if that of a person of rank, at the embalmers. It is then either taken to the house, to be detained a longer or shorter time--according to the attachment of relatives, and their reluctance to part with it--or is prepared for entombment. During the interval of seventy days, the mourners continue their signs of lamentation, which often are excessive in degree, such as tearing off raiment, beating the breast, and pouring dust upon the head. The pomp of the burial of the Pharaohs, I am informed, is inconceivably grand and imposing. The whole realm joins in the rites and processions, and every temple is crowded with sacrificers and incense-burners. We stopped our chariots to witness the funeral procession advance to the shore of the lake, from the wide street leading from Memphis.