The American Encyclopedia of History, Biography and Travel / Comprising Ancient and Modern History: the Biography of Eminent Men of Europe and America, and the Lives of Distinguished Travelers.

by Thomas H. Prescott

At a distance, the Pyramids appear to be tolerably smooth and pyramidal; but on coming close to them, they are found to have a ragged and half-ruined aspect, in consequence of the outer coating of stones and plaster having been removed. Their sides in this rough state present the appearance of a series of steps, composed of huge blocks of yellowish-white limestone. The ascent is toilsome, but I made a point of reaching the top of the Great Pyramid. The ledges of stone are uncomfortably high for a stair; and ladies meaning to ascend, should provide themselves with a footstool, which the guides could lift and hand up to them at each step. There are altogether 206 tiers of stone, from one to four feet high. At length we reached the top, which is an irregular platform, thirty-two feet square; the stones constituting the apex having been thrown down. On gaining this lofty eminence, on which there was room to move about, I felt an extraordinary exhilaration of spirits, not only from the effect of historical associations, but from the remarkable fineness of the atmosphere. The view on all sides was magnificent. One of its most striking features is the distinctness of the line which divides the fertile region from the Desert. There is no middle ground—​no debateable land, over which fertility and desolation, the sand of Sahara and the silt of the Nile, alternately hold sway. So far as the influence of the Nile extends, all is verdure; the moment the sand begins, utter waste ensues.

Having satisfied our curiosity, the party descended; but all found that coming down was a vast deal more fatiguing and dangerous than going up. However, we got to the bottom in safety; and being pretty well appetized, we adjourned to luncheon in a sort of cave close by, where victuals we had brought with us were enjoyed. It is necessary to make this provision for refreshment, because there is no house, tent, or village in the neighborhood. The Great Pyramid is not entirely solid. An entrance has been made, by which a series of labyrinthian passages and chambers have been discovered. The entrance is on the north side; but we did not feel inclined to enter; for the journey in some places requires to be performed on hands and knees. At the centre are two chambers of red granite, in one of which is a sarcophagus; and here is supposed to have slept one of the great rulers of the earth, the king of what was the greatest kingdom of the earth, the proud mortal for whom this mighty structure was raised.

The ascent of the second Pyramid is seldom attempted by visitors: it is much more difficult than that of the first, especially over that portion of the smooth granite crust which still remains about thirty feet down. It is of somewhat less magnitude than the other, but looks as large, from standing on higher ground. The third of the group is considerably smaller. The fourth I did not visit. In the neighborhood of these grand objects of antiquity lie scattered about many interesting remains. The most attractive of these is the Sphinx—​a gigantic figure, half-woman, half-lion, nearly all hewn from the solid rock, the fore-legs and part of the back only being built. There is an altar between the two paws, on which sacrifices appear to have been offered. From the lower part of the body to the top of the head, the Sphinx measures 66 feet, the recumbent portion 102, the paws 50, and the circumference of the head 100 feet. Such has been the drifting of the sands, that the whole figure is now covered except the head and a portion of the dilapidated neck.

A few miles above the Pyramids of Gizeh once stood Memphis, a city as large and flourishing as Alexandria, but now utterly destroyed, and the very ruins hardly distinguishable. Continuing the journey up the valley of the Nile, and within the distance of two hundred miles, the traveler passes the ruins of many decayed cities, now reduced to miserable villages of half-starving Arabs, but once the glory of Egypt. Among these are Arsinöe, Dendera, Thebes, Karnac, Edfou, Elephantina, and Philöe. Edfou is thus described by Mr. Stephens:—​‘At one corner of this miserable place stands one of the magnificent temples of the Nile. The propylon (or gateway), its lofty proportions enlarged by the light of the moon, was the most grand and imposing portal I saw in Egypt. From a base of nearly 100 feet in length, and 30 in breadth, it rises on each side of the gate in the form of a truncated pyramid, to the height of 100 feet, gradually narrowing, till at the top it measures 75 feet in length and 18 in breadth. Judge, then, what was the temple to which this formed merely the entrance; and this was far from being one of the large temples of Egypt. It measured, however, 440 feet in length and 220 in breadth, about equal to the whole space occupied by St. Paul’s Churchyard. Its dromos, pronaos, columns, and capitals, all correspond; and enclosing it is a high wall, still in a state of perfect preservation. I walked round it twice, and, by means of the wall erected to exclude the unhallowed gaze of the stranger, I looked down upon the interior of the temple. Built by the Egyptians for the highest uses to which a building could be dedicated—​for the worship of their gods—​it is now used by the pasha as a granary and storehouse.’

Few travelers proceed farther up the Nile than Philöe, as the journey through Nubia is less safe or agreeable than that within the Egyptian territory. Yet without a visit to the Nubian valley of the Nile, which extends to near the head branches of the river in Abyssinia, much of the ancient grandeur of this part of the world will remain unexplored. Nubia, which is at present a Turkish province, subject to the pasha of Egypt, is frequently called by the name Ethiopia—​from the black complexion of whose inhabitants the term Ethiopian came in early times to signify one who is black, or a negro. This country of Nubia, or Ethiopia, is understood by some historians to have enjoyed a degree of civilization and refinement in art at a date even earlier than Egypt; and till the present day, it possesses pyramids and other monuments of architectural skill as wonderful, in the eyes of the traveler, as those in the lower divisions of the Nile.

So much for a glance at the archaeological treasures of Egypt; let us now return to Cairo, in order to undertake an excursion which has been seldom performed.

The Petrified Forest. This extraordinary curiosity is situated eight or ten miles south from Cairo, and is reached by a journey on the back of a donkey through a rugged piece of country. The ground over which you travel is a dry gravely soil, without a particle of vegetation. Having proceeded for some miles through a rocky valley, a sudden turn to the right takes you through a low range of sand-hills, and in less than a quarter of an hour you arrive at the forest. And such a forest! Trees lying prone on the ground, and transferred into stone. The world contains nothing so wonderful as a work of nature. On every side the prostrate forest extends as far as the eye can reach. Plains and rolling hillocks of sand sweep on and on to the horizon, all strewed thickly over with fragments of fallen trees. They lie at some places so close to each other, that a sure-footed Cairo donkey can scarcely thread his way through them: at other places they are few and far between, scarcely within stone-throw of each other, as if those had been the thickets, these the openings, in the forest. The trees are nowhere round in the surface, but sharp and angular, as if split by heat into many fragments. Few pieces are more than from four to six feet in length; but a series of these may often be seen lying end to end for a space of from fifty to sixty feet, as if the tree they constituted had been sawn or broken across, the pieces remaining in their places. The aspect of the fallen trunks is like that of the half rotten bog-wood found in an Irish or a Scottish morass. In hue, they are for the most part of a lightish chesnut-brown; some of them of a dusky-white, precisely of the color of common ash or pine long exposed to the weather. Of this tint are nearly all the smaller fragments, which often lie about as if chipped off from the larger ones. There are no fangs of roots or branches connected with the stems, but there are the rudiments of both in abundance. The knots indicating where branches once had been, are often of singular beauty and distinctness; sometimes so much so, as to seem fresh torn off the stem. The whole scene is the very picture of solitude and desolation, enhanced beyond that of the ordinary Desert—​which leaves no token of ever having been more productive than it is—​inasmuch as the remains around remind you that what is now salt and barrenness must once have been fertility and verdure. The trees, as already said, are mostly on the surface; many of them, however, are half-buried, others barely show themselves above the sand. The sand itself is light colored; the nodules of stone intermixed with it are rounded; sea-shells everywhere abounding. Near the edge of the forest there are what resemble the dry beds of small-sized streams and torrents: here the little cliffs displayed are of very soft limestone, full of oyster-shells, so fresh and bright, that they seem scarcely at all affected by the weather. They are of the transparent kind, nearly flat, and scarcely thicker than common paper. Selenite here abounds, as generally over the Desert, where sea-salt prevails. It is here for the most part fibrous, the fibers being horizontal, and at right angles to the axes of the vein. I took nearly half a ton of specimens home with me; and these, like the whole of the rest of my collection, were carried free of charge both by the Egyptian Transit and Steam Navigation Company. They were afterwards distributed amongst various of our public museums.

As for the nature of the trees, they are not palms, as their branches show; nor am I aware that there is any living race nearly kindred to them. They are completely silicified, ring like cast-iron, strike fire with flint, and scratch glass. How has this transformation been effected? By no chemical process now known to man. We have nothing at all analogous to it either in the laboratory of the chemist or that of nature. There is no substance more indestructible than charcoal. Cut off from air, it resists the most intense heats known to us, and remains in the bowels of the earth unscathed for millions of years! Here the whole woody and carbonaceous matter has vanished, and its place we find silica—​the earth of flints, a substance nearly insoluble, and by itself infusible by any heat we are acquainted with. Yet so quietly and perfectly has the exchange been effected, that for every atom of charcoal that has been displaced, an atom of flint has been left behind. Textures and tissues so minute, that the help of microscopes is required for their detection—​that their delineation can only be attempted after they have been much magnified—​are changed in substance, but in substance only: the most minute and fragile of their forms remain as when the green leaves and bright blossoms drew their sustenance, and the vital fluids circulated through them. Egypt is the land of hoar antiquity; but what are the wonders of the mummy-case to this? The trees look as if they had fallen down, and been turned to stone on the ground where they grew; they look ‘like to a forest felled by mighty winds;’ they bear no marks of rolling or abrasion, such as that by which flints themselves are rounded. Yet all is sea-sand and shells everywhere; there is nothing to sustain vegetation; and whether the theory that they belong to an age previous to that of the rock in which they are occasionally imbedded, be adopted or not, it is clear that, subsequent to their assumption of their present form and condition, the ground on which they now repose sunk beneath, and rose again far above, the surface of the sea.

It is singular, considering the extent of area, and the diversity of positions in the world over which silicified trees are found exposed above ground, that so little has been written on the subject. In Trinidad, in the West Indies, they are abundant; and they prevail over a vast expanse of surface on the seaboard of New Holland. They abound on the Coromandel coast near Madras; and in Scinde are found from Sukkur to Kurrachee, on salt desert sand, resting on nummulite limestone, exactly as in Egypt.

Cairo to Suez. It has been already stated that our party arrived at Cairo on the morning of the 23d of December. Only a few hours is allowed, and every one should make his arrangements without unnecessary delay. Having arranged at the Transit Office to get all luggage, a small bag excepted, sent forward, and secured his place, the traveler may be considered ready to start. The conveyance to Suez is by vans, which start in detachments at specified hours. In hot weather, it is preferable to start from Cairo in the afternoon, so as to travel all night. By this plan he arrives at the centre sleeping-station in the morning, and after a few hours’ repose, he can again proceed, so as to reach Suez early in the following morning. Some go on direct; others stop.