Cairo to Kisumu

by Frank G. Carpenter

I saw the Pyramids when I left the city. They increased rapidly in size as I came nearer to them, and at the edge of the desert they looked at first like huge heaps of stone. Disappointment came over me. I felt that the travellers of all ages had lied.

Half a mile farther and I was at their base. Now I changed my opinion. The Pyramids are more wonderful than they have ever been painted, and their immensity grows upon one more and more as he looks. As I stood in the middle of one of the sides of the Great Pyramid, it seemed as though the whole sky were walled with stone. The top towered above my head, almost kissing the white clouds which sometimes float in this clear Egyptian sky.

The Great Pyramid has a base covering thirteen acres, and if Herodotus told the truth, it was during his lifetime about half as high again as the Washington Monument. The stones in it to-day would make eight hundred and fifty such monuments, yet fully one half of it, I should judge, has been carted away for buildings in Cairo. To-day it is over three hundred feet lower than Herodotus described it, and its sides do not measure more than seven hundred and fifty feet. It is an almost solid mass of stone, cut in mighty blocks, which are piled up in the shape of steps, growing smaller in size as they reach the top, and terminating in a flat platform large enough to build upon it a house thirty feet square. Such a house would be four hundred and eighty-two feet above the desert. It would command a view of the Nile valley for miles, and its back windows would look out upon the great, billowy plains of golden sand. This pyramid is built right in the desert, as are, indeed, all of the sixty pyramids of greater or less size found in different parts of Egypt. The south windows of the house would have a good view of the Pyramids of Sakkarah, which stand out in geometrical figures of blue upon the site of old Memphis, while on the front porch you could have as an ornament in your great yard below, the old stony-eyed Sphinx who sat with her paws stretched out before her in this same position when these mighty monuments were built, and who is one of the few females in the world who grows old without losing her beauty.

The Pyramids themselves are by no means young. The king who built the Great Pyramid for his tomb lived some three thousand odd years before Christ. Now, five thousand years later, we Americans climb to the top of the huge pile of stones he put up to contain his royal bones and go into the chambers in its interior, which he thought would outlast the ages. With magnesium lights we explore the recesses of the rooms in which he expected to be secluded for eternity, and take photographs in the heart of this old ruler’s tomb.

Mr. Carpenter and his son are standing on the nape of the neck of the Sphinx. She has seen more years than the Pyramids and has been mutilated by successive conquerors and vandals and worn away by the sand blasts of the desert.

Helouan and its sulphur springs, once the resort of the Pharaohs, is again fashionable, and a princess’ palace now serves as hotel. The porch canopy is of what is called tentwork, made of coloured pieces applied in elaborate designs.

The corpse of the king was taken out long ago and history does not record what became of it. All we know of him comes from Herodotus, who says he was a vicious, bad man, and that during the fifty years he ruled the Egyptians he oppressed the people terribly. He built the Pyramid by forced labour, keeping a gang of more than one hundred thousand workmen at it for over twenty years. The stones forming the outside, which have now been taken away, were even larger than those still standing, but many of those that are left are as high as a table and many feet in length. The sides of this Pyramid are in the form of immense stairs, which narrow as they go upward. There are two hundred and fifty of these high steps. If one will go to his dining room and climb upon the table two hundred and fifty-two times he will experience something of the work I had in climbing up the Pyramid. His exertion will be harder, however, for he will not have the help of three half-naked Arabs who were given to me by the Sheik of the Pyramids, and who almost worried the life out of me in their demands for backsheesh all the way up. My wife happened to call me by my given name and during the remainder of that trip I was “Mr. Frank” to these heathen. While they jerked my arms nearly off in pulling me from one ledge to another, they howled out in a barbaric sing-song a gibberish of English, interspersing it with Cherokee whoops, something like this: