He it was too that discovered the small chamber above the landing-place, after you ascend through the long gallery of the great Pyramid on your left hand, and he left the ladder by which he ascended, for the satisfaction of other travellers. But there is nothing in the chamber further worthy of notice, than its having escaped discovery so many ages.
I think it more extraordinary still, that, for such a time as these Pyramids have been known, travellers were content rather to follow the report of the ancients, than to make use of their own eyes.
Yet it has been a constant belief, that the stones composing these Pyramids have been brought from the [77]Libyan mountains, though any one who will take the pains to remove the sand on the south side, will find the solid rock there hewn into steps.
And in the roof of the large chamber, where the Sarcophagus stands, as also in the top of the roof of the gallery, as you go up into that chamber, you see large fragments of the rock, affording an unanswerable proof, that those Pyramids were once huge rocks, standing where they now are; that some of them, the most proper from their form, were chosen for the body of the Pyramid, and the others hewn into steps, to serve for the superstructure, and the exterior parts of them.
Canja under Sail.
London Publish’d Decr. 1st. 1789. by G. Robinson & Co.
CHAP. III.
Leaves Cairo—Embarks on the Nile for Upper Egypt—Visits Metrahenny and Mohannan—Reasons for supposing this the situation of Memphis.