Sharp County record., 1891-11-05

10 hold us back, we were IoWefe@,
hand below hand, until the ground was
invitingly near, and amid the jargcn OF
the Arabs we were safely landed.
Then came one Of the most wonderful
feats Of daring and agility. One of the
Arabs solicited dollar, saying he would
run up and down the pyraninds in
seven minutes. We would rather have
given him a dollar not to go, but this
ascent and descent in seven minutes he
was determined on, and SO by the
watch in seven minutes he went to the
top and was back again at the base. 1t
was blood.curdllng spectacle.
l said the dominant color of the
pyramid was gray, but in certain lights
1t seems to shake off the gray OF CEN
turies and become a blonde and the
silver turns to the golden. 1t covers
thirteen acres of ground. What an an
tiquity! 1t was at least two thousand
years old when the baby Christ was
carried within sight of it by his fugitive
parents, Joseph and Mary. The storms
of forty centuries have drenched it.,
bombarded it, shadowed 1t, flashed
upon it, but there It stands, ready to
take another forty centuries of atmos-
pheric attack if the world should con-
tinue to exist. The oldest buildings of
the earth are juniors to this great
senior of the centuries. Herodotus says
that for ten years preparations were
being made for the building of the
pyramid. 1t has eighty-two million,
one hundred and one thousand cubic
feet of masonry. One hundred thou
sand workmen at one time toiled in
its erection. To bring the stone from
the quarries a causeway sixty
feet wide was built The top stones
were lifted by machinery such as the
world knows nothing of to-day, 1t is
seven hundred and forty-six feet each
side of the square base, The structure
is four hundred and fifty feet high,
higher than the cathedrals of Cologne,
Strasburg, Rouen, St. Peters and st.
Paul's. No surprise to me that it was
put at the head of the Seven Wonders
of the World. 1t has a subterraneous
room of red granite called the king s
chamber" and another room called the
Queens chamber" and the probability
is that there are other rooms yet unex-
plored. The evident design of the
architect was to make these rooms as
inaccessible as possible. After all the
work of exploration and all the dig
ging and blasting, if you would enter
these subterraneous rooms you must
go through a passage only three
ieet eleven inch high ard less than four
feet wide. A sarcophagus of red gran
ite stands down under this mountain OF
masonry. This sarcophagus could not
have been carried in after the pyramid
was built. 1t must have been put there
before the structure was reared. Prob
ably in that sarcophagus once lay a
wooden coffin containing dead king,
but time has destroyed the coffin and
destroyed the last vcstige of human re.
mains. For three thousand years this
sepulchral room was unopened, and
would have been until to-day probably
unopened, had not superstitious i'm
preston got abroad that the heart OF
the pyramid was filed with sill
yer and gold and diamonds, and
under AL Mamoun, an excavating party
went to work and having bored and
blasted through one hundred feet of
rock they found no opening ahead, and
were about to give up the attempt
when the workmen heard stone roll
down into seemingly hollow place,
and encouraged by that they resumed
their work and came into the under
ground rooms, The disappointment OF
the workmen in finding the sarcophagus
empty of all silver and gold and pre-.
cious stones was SO great that they
would have assassnated AL Mamoun,
who employed them, had he not hid ir
another part of the pyramid as mucl
silver and gold as would pay them fol
their work at ordinary rate of wages
and induced them to dig till they, tc
their surprise, came upon adequate
compensation.
l wonder not at this mountain o.
limestone and red granite has been tn,
fascination of scholars, of scientists, OF
intelligent Christians in all ages. Sil
John Herschel, the astronomer, said ht
thought that it had astronomical signifi
cancc. The wise men who occom
panied Napoleon's army into Egyp
went into profound study of the pyra
mid. In 1865, Prof Smyth and hi
wife lived in the empty tombs near by
the pyramid that they might be as con
tinuously as possible close to the pyra
mid which they were investigat
ing The pyramid built more thar
four thousand years ago, be
ing complete geometricnl figure
wise men have concluded IL must hav,
been divinely constructed Men cam,
through thousands of years to fine
architecture, to music, to painting, but
this was perfect at the worlds star
and God must have directed il, Al
astronomers and geometricians ant
scientists say that it was
scientifically and mathematcaly con
structed before science and mathemat
les were born. From the inscriptions
on the pyramid, from It's proportions
from the points OF the COMPASS rccor