The Farmington times. (Farmington, St. Francois County, Mo.) 1905-1926, 1911-08-10

w numbered for 81 centuries be
NJ ..ge the coming Of Christine
e Great pyramid of Cheops. or Ithu.
III III u still stands there, eight
miles from Cairo, deiying time,
the elements and the vandals, all
vnrkup together, barely able TO
stretch is skin. Psychologists worked
at it Napoleon fought one OF his
splendid battles in its shadow And
an American Dow Coyington, has
broup. out the latest word from its
mysterious depths. he has almost
solved IT'S secret.
MIR Cuyington has cleared every
passage that can be found, He has
made f. possible for visitors to reach
the mysterious subterranean chamber
within its shaft which goes rs far
down AS the level of the Nile in 2l7O
b. {.
Best of all, he has cleared the sin.
gle remaining course just above the
sands oft the desert and revealed to
the world that its outer sheath
was OF pure white limestone,
whica nobody knew before, be.
caus" the great mass Of stone had
been Used as a common quarry for
thousands Of years. The limestone
shca'hinE makes a mosque in Egypt
TO-DAY When tho tomb Of CheoDs was
first reared II was as white rs a mar.
bic man. ION Of our times. But it is not
SO run.
Few of MS can realize what thirty
seven centuries before Christ really
means That is 5.Gl1 years ago. The
technical work OF those days was mar
volous The masonry is absolutely
unrivaled- there is nothing better in
all the world today Monuments and
palaces have come and have gone u
hundred times since the great pyra-
mid was built. They have persisted;
It remains.
For twenty years 100000 men tolled
at the stones They built their great
pile facing exactly north and south.
They chose base Of nearly a sew
enth of n mile 76l feet. to be exact.
This was a plot covering nearly 10
acres. There were 2l0 perfect courses
OF stone, almost invisibly Joined, of
Mokattem limestone blocks. At an
angle of little more than fifty-one de-
grees It's four sides swept UP, tapering
to the pointed apex, 431 feet above the
ground.
In It were 100000 cubic feet Of
stone, put up by people who had no
modern machinery. There are about
1900. 900 individual blocks. Treated
for centuries as a public quarry, all its
outer stones, and facings have been
taken to Cairo and elsewhere, chiefly
for mosque construction. The anti
quaries never knew about this outside
sheath until Mr. Covington OF America
came there with permission from the
british government TO make his ex.
ploratlons.
Mr.. CovinGton began his work nine
Years ago, making his camp In the
shadow of the great pyramid. He
started where the Callph Mamoun left
of In SIS A. d., nearly LOO years ago.
It was Mamoun who forced the first
passage into the stern depths of the
monster OF stone, but after he found
It nothing more was done for cen
turtles. Whole generations came and
went before anything was learned OF
the mystery.
First of all the American scarcher
cleared away all the debris. Then he
started ut the descending or entrance
passage. just below its granite plugs
and found the mysterious chamber be-
low the ground-burrowed out OF the
living rock beneath the mighty pile
above-"The stones of darkness and
the shadow of death" What this
chamber was for is not yet known.
The passage leading to II may now be
used by cautious visitors. 1t is $50
feet long and through the natural rock
slopes down not half an inch out OF
plumb.
When he got to the bottom OF this
chamber Mr.. Covington realized that
there was more to do. lie found
well shaft. 1872 feet long piled up with
twenty feet Of debris. When this was
cleared away there started current
OF strong, fresh air 1t swept down
the entrance passage. up the well
shaft. thence down the descending
passage out by the forced passage
-ads by Mr.. Mamoun. Immediately
the tem6r'Eture dropped 2 degrees.
When Mr. Covington cleared the de-
bris from the lower end of the kings
chamber south air channel, TIA feet
long. he reduced the temperature
again.
The ordinary man may but visit the
great pyramid--or any of the others.
for that matter Unless he have au-