"If we had so much stone, what could one do with it?" is asked in The Boy Travelers in Egypt. And it is answered: "You could build a wall four feet high and two feet thick--a good wall for a farm or a garden--all the way from New York to Salt Lake City, and were New York in danger of an attack and desired to surround the whole of Manhattan Island--21 miles--with a wall forty feet high and twenty feet thick, here would be material to do it." Rawlinson tries to bring its size home to us by comparing it to structures with which we are familiar. He says: "In height it exceeds the capitol at Washington by nearly 200 feet, and its cubic contents would provide a city of 22,000 houses solidly built of stone having walls a foot thick, twenty feet frontage and thirty feet deep, thirty feet high, allowing one-third for dividing walls." For several hundred years the Mohammedans have occupied Egypt and they have taken away quantities of stone from the lesser pyramids, from temples and other ancient structures of Memphis, to be used in their mosques and buildings in Cairo, near-by. The outer casing of the Great Pyramid, beautiful granite as hard as iron, was removed to build the large mosque of this comparatively modern city. The removal of this casing has left the under layers bare, and these, step-like in appearance, are annually scaled by tourists. With the help of Arab guides, one may ascend to the very top of the huge pile, gaining thence a splendid view of the surrounding country. Even the pyramids left cased in granite are no longer smooth. The weathering of ages has roughened their sides and dulled their polish. They are of a tawny orange color and gleam by certain lights like gigantic piles of gold. Within the pyramids were chambers for the remains of kings and their families and chambers for friends to gather for worship--for after his death, an Egyptian king was worshipped as a god. Even a spacious gallery was provided near the top of the Great Pyramid, in order that air might circulate freely and thus keep the tomb dry. The ambitious, short-sighted Fourth dynasty kings exhausted the resources of their realm. During the Fifth and Sixth dynasties the pyramids became smaller. Even the long-suffering land of the Nile could no longer muster vast forces to provide huge abiding places for the pharaohs. Marvelous temples would still be erected, and wonderful feats of architecture accomplished, but the passion for tremendous tombs had in a measure spent itself.