CLIMBING THE GREAT PYRAMID “All right! Very good!! Hard work. Good boys!! Mr. Frank satisfied!! On top pay money/' This was a continual reminder of my indebtedness to them, and they enforced their song with more numerous jerks the higher we rose. They were surprised when I refused to give them any backsheesh until we got to the bottom, and lifted me down about as jerkily as they had pulled me up.

I went inside the Pyramid to examine the great cham¬ bers, which are quite as wonderful as the outside construc¬ tion. They are built of granite blocks so closely joined that one cannot put a pin between the crevices. The Queen's Chamber is seventeen feet wide by eighteen feet long, and its ceiling is twenty feet high. It is as dark as the night which the Lord spread over Egypt when He wanted to soften the heart of Pharaoh, but the night was turned into day by the burning of magnesium, and we could see the wonderful polish on the walls. The King's Chamber is lined entirely with granite and is as big as a country church.

It would take one hundred and twenty-five yards of carpet to cover its floor. Its ceiling, which is nineteen feet high, is roofed with nine enormous slabs of granite, each of which is eighteen feet long. The only thing within the chamber is a great sarcophagus about three feet wide and three feet deep, and just long enough to contain the body of a man. There are also other chambers in this Pyramid. When one considers the machinery of the times, its struc¬ ture is a marvel. Its cost can hardly be estimated in the money of to-day. Before it was mutilated, there was on it a record of the radishes, onions, and garlic which had 83