After dining with Caviglia, dear A----, to continue my yarn, we started
by moonlight for the Pyramid, in company with the Genius Loci, and duly
provided with candles for exploration. I must premise that Caviglia,
whose extraordinary discoveries you are doubtless well acquainted with,
has just been set to work again by Colonel Vyse, Mr Sloane, and Colonel
Campbell, our Consul-General at Cairo. He is at present attempting to
make further discoveries in the Great Pyramid; and as soon as he gets a
firman from the Pasha, intends to attack the others.
The shape of this Pyramid has been compared to “four equilateral
triangles on a square basis, mutually inclining towards each other
till they meet in a point.” Lincoln’s-Inn Fields, the area of which
corresponds to its base, wholly filled up with an edifice higher by a
third than St Paul’s, may give some idea of its dimensions.
The entrance is on the northern face of the Pyramid, on the sixteenth
step, though you can ride up to it, such immense mounds of fallen stones
have accumulated at the base. A long low passage, most beautifully cut
and polished, runs downwards above 260 feet at an angle of twenty-seven
degrees, to a large hall sixty feet long, directly under the centre of
the Pyramid, cut out of rock, and never, it would appear, finished. This
was discovered by Caviglia; the passage before this time was supposed to
end about half way down, being blocked up with stones at the point where
another passage meets it, running upwards at the same angle of 27, and
by which you might mount in a direct line to the grand gallery, and from
that to the king’s chamber, where stands the sarcophagus, nearly in the
centre of the pile, were it not for three or four blocks of granite that
have been slid down from above, in order to stop it up.
By climbing through a passage, formed, as it is supposed, by the Caliph
Mamoun, you wind round these blocks of granite into the passage, so that,
with the exception of ten or twelve feet, you do in fact follow the
original line of ascent. We descended by it. Close to the opening of this
passage on the grand gallery is the mouth of a well about 200 feet deep,
by which we ascended from the neighbourhood of the great lower hall. Two
or three persons had descended it before Caviglia’s time, but he cleared
it out to the full depth that his predecessors had reached, and believing
it went still deeper, hearing a hollow sound as he stamped on the bottom,
he attempted to excavate there, but was obliged to desist on account of
the excessive heat, which neither he nor the Arabs could stand.
Think what his delight must have been, when in the course of clearing
the passage which I mentioned to you leads directly from the great lower
hall, smelling a strong smell of sulphur; and remembering he had burnt
some in the well to purify the air, he dug in that direction, and found
a passage leading right into the bottom of the well, where the ropes,
pick-axes, &c., &c., were lying that he had left there in despair, on
abandoning the idea of further excavation in that direction as hopeless.
Up this well, as I said, we climbed, holding a rope, and fixing our
feet in holes cut in the stone; the upper part of the ascent was very
difficult, and bats in numbers came tumbling down on us; but at last we
landed safely in the grand gallery, a noble nondescript of an apartment,
very lofty, narrowing towards the roof, and most beautifully chiselled;
it ends towards the south in a staircase, if I may so term an inclined
plane, with notches cut in the surface for the feet to hold by; the
ascent is perilous, the stone being as polished and slippery as glass;
before ascending, however, we proceeded by another beautifully worked
passage, cut directly under the staircase to a handsome room called the
queen’s chamber. Returning to the gallery, we mounted the inclined plane
to the king’s chamber, directly over the queen’s. The passage to leading
to it was defended by a portcullis now destroyed, but you see the grooves
it fell into. His majesty’s chamber is a noble apartment, cased with
enormous slabs of granite, twenty feet high; nine similar ones (seven
large and two half-sized) form the ceiling.
At the west end stands the sarcophagus, which rings, when struck, like
a bell. From the north and south sides respectively of this room branch
two small oblong-square passages, like air-holes, cut through the granite
slabs, and slanting upwards--the first for eighty feet in a zigzag
direction, the other for one hundred and twenty.
It is Caviglia’s present object to discover whither these lead. Being
unable to pierce the granite, he has begun cutting sideways into the
limestone at the point where the granite casing of the chamber ends has
reached the northern passage at the point where it is continued through
the limestone, and is cutting a large one below it, so that the former
runs like a groove in the roof of the latter, and he has only to follow
it as a guide, and cut away till he readies the denouement. “Now,” says
Caviglia, “I will show you how I hope to find out where the southern
passage leads to.”
Returning to the landing-place at the top of the grand staircase, we
mounted a ricketty ladder to the narrow passage that leads to Davison’s
chamber, so named after the English consul at Algiers, who discovered it
seventy years ago; it is directly above the king’s chamber, the ceiling
of the one forming, it would appear, the floor of the other. The ceiling
of Davison’s chamber consists of eight stones, beautifully worked; and
this ceiling, which is so low that you can only sit cross-legged under
it, Caviglia believes to be the floor of another large room above it,
which he is now trying to discover. To this room he concludes the little
passage leads that branches from the south side of the king’s chamber.
He has accordingly dug down the calcareous stone at the farther end of
Davison’s chamber, in hopes of meeting it; once found, it will probably
lead him to the place he is in quest of.--_Lord Lindsay’s Letters from
the East._
* * * * *
JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN.--Mr Curran happening to cross-examine one of
those persons known in Ireland by the significant description of
half-gentlemen, found it necessary to ask a question as to his knowledge
of the Irish tongue, which, though perfectly familiar to him, the witness
affected not to understand, whilst he at the same time spoke extremely
bad English. “I see, sir, how it is: you are more ashamed of knowing your
own language than of not knowing any other.”
A barrister entered the hall with his wig very much awry, and of which
not at all apprised, he was obliged to endure from almost every observer
some remark on its appearance, till at last, addressing himself to Mr
Curran, he asked him, “Do you see any thing ridiculous in this wig?” The
answer instantly was, “_Nothing but the head_.”
Bills of indictment had been sent up to a grand jury, in the finding of
which Mr Curran was interested. After delay and much hesitation, one of
the grand jurors came into court to explain to the judge the grounds and
reasons why it was ignored. Mr Curran, very much vexed by the stupidity
of this person, said “You, sir, can have no objection to write upon the
back of the bill _ignoramus_, for self and fellow-jurors; it will then be
a _true_ bill.”
Mr Hoare’s countenance was grave and solemn, with an expression like one
of those statues of the Brutus head. He seldom smiled; and if he smiled,
he smiled in such a sort as seemed to have rebuked the spirit that could
smile at all. Mr Curran once observing a beam of joy to enliven his face,
remarked, “Whenever I see smiles on Hoare’s countenance, I think they are
like tin clasps on an oaken coffin.”
* * * * *
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