degree, of removing their prejudices. It is still,' says Mr. Salt, ' almost inconceivable how he could so far surmount the prejudices of these people as to induce them to work in so confined a space, where a light, after the first half hour, would not burn, and where, consequently, every thing was to be done by feeling and not by sight; the heat at the same time being so intense and the air so suffocating that, in spite of all precautions, it was not possible to stay below an hour at a time without suffering from its pernicious effects. At length, indeed, it became so intolerable that one Arab was brought up nearly dead, and several others, on their ascending, fainted away; so that at last, in spite of the command laid upon them, they almost entirely abandoned their labour, declaring that they were willing to work but not to die for him.'

Thus discouraged, Mr. Caviglia next turned his attention to the clearing of the principal entrance or passage of the pyramid which, from time immemorial, had been so blocked up as to oblige those who entered to creep on their hands and knees; hoping by this to give a freer passage to the air. He not only succeeded in carrying his purpose into effect, but, in the course of his labours, made the unexpected discovery that the main passage, leading from the entrance, did not terminate in the manner asserted by Maillet, but (having removed several large masses of calcareous stone and granite, apparently placed there to obstruct the passage) that it still continued in the same inclined angle downwards, was of the same dimensions, and had its sides worked with the same care, as in the channel above, though filled up nearly to the top with earth and fragments of stone. Having proceeded to the length of 150 feet in clearing out this passage, the air began to be so impure and the heat so suffocating that he had the same difficulties again to encounter with regard to the working Arabs. Even his own health was at this time visibly impaired, and he was attacked with a spitting of blood; nothing, however, could induce him to desist from his researches.

By the 14th March he had excavated as low down as 200 feet in the new passage without any thing particular occurring, when shortly afterwards a doorway on the right side 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 enterprize, he had burned some sulphur for the purpose of purifying the air, conceived it probable that this doorway might communicate with it, an idea which, in a little time, he had the gratification of seeing realized, by discovering that the channel through the doorway 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 further excavation. This discovery was so far valuable

as

as it afforded a complete circulation of air along the new passage, and up the shaft of the Well into the chamber, so as to obviate all danger for the future from the impurity of the atmosphere. Mr. Salt, after this, made the tour of the long passage, and up the shafts into the great gallery, without much inconvenience.

It will be seen, on referring to our Thirty-third Number, that our notions respecting this Well were tolerably correct, though we could not at that time exactly appreciate the accuracy of Dr. Clarke's experiment of throwing down the stone, nor the validity of his reasoning upon it. We have now the means of estimating the value of both; and they must be allowed to form a very curious instance of the force of imagination bolstering itself up on ancient authority. This ingenious traveller says, We threw down some stones, and observed that they rested at about the depth which Greaves has mentioned (twenty feet); but being at length provided with a stone nearly as large as the mouth of the well, and about fifty pounds in weight, we let this fall, listening attentively to the result from the spot where the other stones rested. We were agreeably surprized by hearing, after a length of time which must have equalled some seconds, a loud and distinct report, seeming to come from a spacious subterraneous apartment, accompanied by a splashing noise as if the stone had been broken into pieces, and had fallen into a reservoir of water at an amazing depth.' Thus,' continues the Doctor, does experience always tend to confirm the accounts left us by the ancients! for this exactly answers to the description given by Pliny of this well. Now it is quite obvious, from Messrs. Davison and Caviglia's better experience,' that Dr. Clarke's large stone' could not, by any possibility, travel an inch beyond the bottom of the first shaft, or about twenty feet; unless we are to suppose that, on reaching the first bottom, it took a horizontal roll due south eight feet, dropped down the second shaft of five feet; then took a second roll of about five feet, and finally tumbled down the third shaft: but even thus there would be no 'splashing,' though 'the inundation of the Nile was nearly at its height;' as a new chamber, discovered by Caviglia, which is even lower than the bottom of the Well, is stated to be thirty feet above the level of the Nile at its greatest elevation. Of this chamber we have now to give some account.

The new passage did not terminate at the doorway which opened upon the bottom of the Well. Continuing to the distance of twentythree 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 chamber, immediately under the central point of the pyramid. This new chamber is sixty-six feet long by twenty-seven feet broad, with a flat roof, and,

when

when first discovered, was nearly filled with loose stones and rubbish, which, with considerable labour, Mr. Caviglia removed. The platform of the floor, dug out of the rock, is irregular, nearly one half of the length from the eastern or entrance end being level, and about fifteen feet from the ceiling; while in the middle it descends five feet lower, in which part there is a hollow space bearing all the appearance of the commencement of a well or shaft. From hence it rises to the western end, so that at this extremity there is scarcely room between the floor and the ceiling to stand upright, the whole chamber having the appearance of an unfinished excavation; though Mr. Salt thinks, after a careful comparison of it with other subterranean chambers which have been disfigured by the combined effects of time and the rude hauds of curious inquirers, that it may once have been highly wrought, and used, perhaps, for the performance of solemn and secret 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. Mr. Salt says, he had flattered himself that this chamber would turn out to be that described by Herodotus as containing the tomb of Cheops which was insulated by a canal from the Nile; but the want of an inlet, and its elevation of thirty feet above the level of the Nile at its highest point, put an end to this delusive idea. He thinks, however, from an expression of Strabo, purporting that the passage from the entrance leads directly down to the chamber which contained the bvia, (the receptacle of the dead,) that this new chamber was the only one known to that author. Whatever might have been the intention of this deeply excavated chamber, no vestige of a sarcophagus could now be traced. It was left for a mussulman,' says Mr. Salt, 'to discover the real sanctuary and to despoil the tombs of their contents. Al Mamoun, the son of Haroun al Raschid, prompted by the treasuresearching spirit of the age, effected this laborious undertaking, which, though not so arduous as it is described to have been by Maillet, might well defy any efforts but those of a sovereign enthusiastic in the pursuit.' To Dr. Clarke, who, in defiance of numerous authorities, affects to consider the researches of the early Arabs within the pyramids as a legendary tale, we recommend the perusal of the Arabic inscription found by Belzoni in the chamber of the pyramid of Cephrenes.

On the south side of this irregularly formed or unfinished chamber, is an excavated 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-where it abruptly terminates. Another passage at the east end of the chamber commences with a kind of arch, and runs about forty feet into the solid body of the pyramid.

Mr.

Mr. Salt alludes to some other passage noticed by Olivier, in which the names of Paisley' and 'Munro' were now found inscribed at its extremity.

The next enterprize of Mr. Caviglia was to examine the chamber first discovered by Mr. Davison, which he effected from the great gallery by means of a rope-ladder. This discovery being noticed in our manuscript memoir as mentioned only by the travellers Niebuhr and Bruce, proves, as we suspected, that Mr. Salt had not seen Mr. Walpole's late publication The sides and roof of this chamber are described as being coated with red granite of the finest polish; and Caviglia ascertained that the unevenness of the floor was occasioned by its being formed of the individual blocks of granite which constituted the roof of the chamber below; they must therefore be wedged in on the principle of the arch. Mr. Davison mentions the same thing; and the bats' dung of a foot deep, with which the floor was in his time covered, was now increased to eighteen inches.

The laborious exertions of Mr. Caviglia in clearing out these channels and chambers and passages do not appear to have been rewarded with any new discovery of antiquities; nor does he seem to think that any new light has been thrown on the long contested question, as to the original intention of those stupendous fabrics. That the main object was to cover the remains of their projectors, or of the priests, or both, there seems to be no reasonable grounds to doubt; and we trust, that before the contents of the sarcophagus, recently discovered in the pyramid of Cephrenes, shall be dispersed and lost, the fact will be ascertained whether the bones of a human subject have not been mixed with those of a cow. Neither can we doubt that many other secret passages and chambers yet remain to be discovered in those gloomy mansions of mystery and wonder. The conjecture of Pauw is by no means improbable, that the Serapeum or temple of Serapis, which Strabo places to the west of Memphis, is the central spot which protects and covers the grand entrance to all the numerous adits or galleries leading to the foundations of the pyramids of Gizeh; and, perhaps, to those of Saccara and Dashour, between which and the Delta, Memphis is reported by the ancients to have been situated, and its ruins recognized, near Metrahenny, by Pococke, Davison, and other modern travellers. In fact, it appears that the whole intermediate space between the borders of the lake Mæris and Gizeh is so completely occupied by subterraneous catacombs, temples, pyramids and mausoleums, as to render the supposition most probable of its being one vast cemetery, the centre of which was occupied by the celebrated city of Memphis; and that subterranean communications existed between the several edifices, from the pyramid of Cheops

to

to the labyrinth with its three thousand chambers, one half of which, being buried in the excavated rock, the Father of history was not permitted to visit. Mr. Caviglia has to a certain degree determined a long disputed point,-how far the living rock had been made an auxiliary in the construction of the pyramids. This rock, which shews itself externally at the north-eastern angle, appears in the main passage, and again close to the mouth of the well, the highest projection into the body of the pyramid being about eighty feet from the level of its external base.

But much more, we are fully persuaded, yet remains to be discovered within the pyramids. We have now the knowledge of three distinct chambers in that of Cheops, all of which had evidently been opened by the Saracens, (perhaps by the Romans, long before the arrival of the former in Egypt;) but for any thing that is known to the contrary, there may be three hundred, and might be ten times three hundred such chambers yet undiscovered. The magnitude of those stupendous masses makes no very striking impression on the mind from a mere contemplation of their dimensions in figures; and travellers mostly agree in their expressions of disappointment on first approaching them; being able with difficulty to persuade themselves of their vast bulk till some familiar object occurs to enable them to make the comparison. When we stated the pyramid of Cheops (supposing it solid throughout) to contain six times the mass of stone that will be contained in the great Break-water across Plymouth sound, it was a comparison of one gigantic accumulation of materials with another somewhat less gigantic, and helped only to give a comparative view of the labour, and quantity of materials respectively consumed in these two great fabrics-but, to assist the mind to form a just idea of the immen sity of the mass, let us take the great chamber of the sarcophagus, whose dimensions (it being about 35 feet long, 174 broad, and 183 high* are those of a tolerably large sized drawing-room-which, as the solid contents of the pyramid are found to exceed 85,000,000 cubic feet, forms nearly part of the whole; so that, after leaving the contents of every second chamber solid by way of separation, there might be three thousand seven hundred chambers, each equal in size to the sarcophagus chamber, within the pyramid of Cheops. How little then do we yet know of the real state and disposition of the interior of this stupendous edifice!

The next operations of Mr. Caviglia were directed to a minute examination of those numerous ruined edifices and tumuli which, when viewed from the top of the great pyramid, appear in countless multitudes, scattered without order among the other

These are the measurements of Mr. Caviglia.

pyramids,