veral Arabs, whom he employed in drawing up the rubbish from the bottom with baskets and cords. In a short time, however, owing to the extreme reluctance of these people to work, he was compelled to suspend his undertaking until an order from the Kaiya-bey was procured, which had the effect of subduing their indolence, and, to a certain degree, of removing their prejudices. It is not, indeed, surprising that the natives should have manifested reluctance to labour in circumstances so appalling; being confined in a place where, owing to the impurity of the atmosphere, no light would burn longer than half an hour, and where the heat was so intense as to threaten suffocation. At length, in fact, it became so intolerable that one Arab was carried up nearly dead, and several others, on their ascending to the surface, fainted away; so that, at last, in defiance of the command laid upon them, they almost entirely abandoned the task, declaring that they were willing to work, but not to die for him.

Thus opposed and disappointed, Mr Caviglia next turned his attention to the clearing of the principal entry or passage into the Pyramid, which, from time immemorial, had been so blocked up as to oblige those who ventured within its orifice to creep on their hands and knees. His chief object in this undertaking was to improve the ventilation of the interior, a purpose which he not only carried into effect, but, moreover, in the course of his labours, he made the unexpected discovery that the main passage leading from the entry did not terminate in the manner asserted by Maillet, and believed by all his successors. On the contrary, having removed several large masses of calcareous stone and granite,

apparently placed there to obstruct all farther progress, he found that it still continued in the same inclined plane downwards, was of the same dimensions, and had its sides worked with the same care as in the portion above, though filled up nearly to the top with earth and fragments of rock. After clearing it out to the length of a hundred and fifty feet, the air became again so impure, and the heat so suffocating, that he had once more the same difficulties to encounter with regard to the Arabs. Even his own health was at this time visibly impaired, and he was attacked with a spitting of blood; but nothing could induce him to desist from his interesting researches.

After the lapse of the third month from the time at which he began his toils, he had excavated as far as two hundred feet in the new passage without any thing particular occurring, when, shortly afterwards, a door on the right hand was discovered, from which, in the course of a few hours, a strong smell of sulphur was perceived to issue. Mr Caviglia having now recollected that when at the bottom of the well, in his first enterprise, he had burned some sulphur for the purpose of purifying the air, conceived it probable that this door-way might communicate with it,-an idea which, in a little time, he had the pleasure of seeing realized, by discovering that it opened at once upon the bottom of the well, where he found the baskets, cords, and other implements, which had been left there on his recent attempt at a farther excavation. This discovery was so far valuable as it afforded a complete circulation of air along the whole passage, and up the shaft of the well, and thereby obviated all dan

ger for the future, arising from the noxious condition of the atmosphere.*

But the passage did not terminate at the doorway which opened upon the bottom of the well. Continuing to the distance of twenty-three feet beyond it, in the same angle of inclination, it became narrower, and took a horizontal direction for about twenty-eight feet farther, where it opened into a spacious apartment immediately under the central point of the Pyramid. This new chamber is sixtysix feet long by twenty-seven broad, with a flat

It is amusing to contrast the indefatigable exertions of this individual, whose sole motives were derived from an enlightened curiosity and a desire to benefit the literary world, with the cautious procedure of Colonel Coutelle, one of Bonaparte's military savans :-"J'arrivai à l'extrémité, mais non pas à point où s'étaient arrêtés les ouvriers : le fond était rempli de terre et de cailloux roulés; j'en remplis une de mes poches; ensuite je pris toutes les mesures dont j'avais besoin. Mais déjà ma Îumière était pâle; ma respiration plus genée; le thermomètre de Reaumur était audessus de 25 degrés," &c. After filling one of his pockets with the rubbish which impeded his progress into the secret apartments of the Pyramid, the gallant Colonel withdrew, uttering imprecations against the detestable atmosphere, which at once affected his breathing and raised the thermometer.-Descrip. de l'Egypt. Antiquités, vol. ii. p. 39.

The same writer informs us that the French, hoping to find many antiquities fresh and undesecrated in the interior of a pyramid not yet touched, adopted the resolution of demolishing one of the third or fourth class from top to bottom. It is stated that every layer of stone was from a yard to a yard and a half in depth, and that all the blocks, being of a dimension proportioned to their thickness, weighed about twelvethousand pounds (6000 kilogrammes) a piece. But, after having advanced about half way in the process of demolition, they were obliged to relinquish the enterprise; leaving, says the Colonel, the fruit which would have indemnified their toils to be reaped by those who were to come after them.

roof; and, when first entered, was found nearly filled with large stones and rubbish, which Mr Caviglia succeeded in removing. The platform of the floor, which is dug out of the rock, is irregular, nearly onehalf of the length from the east end being level, and about fifteen feet from the ceiling; while in the middle it descends five feet lower, in which there is a hollow space, bearing all the appearance of the commencement of a well or shaft. From this point it rises to the western end; so that, at the extremity, there is scarcely room between the floor and the roof for a man to stand upright, the whole chamber having the appearance of an unfinished excavation. Mr Salt, however, is disposed to think, after a careful comparison of it with other subterranean apartments which have been disfigured by the combined effects of time and the rude hands of curious visitors, that it may once have been highly wrought, and used, perhaps, for the performance of solemn and sacred mysteries. Some Roman characters, rudely formed, had been marked with the flame of a candle on the rock, part of which, having mouldered away, rendered the words illegible. The same gentleman had flattered himself that this chamber would turn out to be the one described by Herodotus as containing the tomb of Cheops, which was insulated by a stream drawn from the Nile; but the want of an inlet for the sacred fluid, and the elevation of the floor thirty feet above the level of the river at its highest inundation, put an end to this delusive opinion. From an expression of Strabo, however, purporting that the passage from the entrance leads directly down to the chamber which contains the sarcophagus, he thinks, and perhaps

justly, that this apartment was the only one known to the Greek geographer.

On the south side of this spacious excavation there is a passage just wide and high enough for a man to creep along on his hands and knees, continuing horizontally in the rock for fifty-five feet; but there it abruptly terminates. Another opening at the east end of the chamber commences with a kind of arch, and runs about forty feet into the solid rock of the Pyramid. A third passage is mentioned, but so obscurely that we cannot ascertain either its direction or dimensions. It is not, however, to be imagined that these passages had no object, or that they originally terminated at the point where the curiosity of modern travellers meets a check from the accumulation of rubbish, or, perhaps, from the intervention of a regular portcullis, such as Belzoni encountered in the second Pyramid. Dr Richardson, indeed, insinuates that the avenues in question have not been actually explored by several writers who have thought proper to describe them,—a charge which, we are satisfied, does not apply to Caviglia, whose exertions were only limited by the utmost bounds of human energy and perseverance.

Before we proceed to some more general observations on the history and comparative magnitude of the Pyramids, we shall present to the reader a short account of the discoveries made by Belzoni in the interior of that which bears the name of Cephrenes.

As Herodotus, whose fidelity has been generally approved by the investigations of more recent times, gave assurance that there were no chambers in this edifice, a long time had passed without any attempt being made to penetrate its outer walls. In fact,