Mr. Knibb, Mr. Mann, and others, to them. Those good gentlemen brought their lives in their hands-(hear):-they risked their lives for the poor black men-(cheers). The masters in Jamaica, some of them, would sooner see the devil than see them—(laughter). But the good missionaries fought the good fight, and they conquered; and their labors were blessed abundantly-(cheers). It would do the hearts of his white brethren good to see the watchmen on the mountains come running down on a summer's day to the church, to worship God-(hear and cheers). His black brethren would never forget the great kindness of the good missionaries who brought the glad tidings to them. Before he came away from Jamaica he called his brethren together to ask them what they had to say to their friends in England, who had sent them freedom, and they lifted up their hands, and they shouted to God to bless their white friends. There was one particular point that his brethren thought much of. They had heard that their white friends had promised to send the Gospel to their father-land and mother-country, that they would send it to Africa; and they told him to stand hu thain whión fin

tne meeting.

Several other gentlemen then addressed the meeting. We understand

a very munificent collection was made.

THE

CALCUTTA

CHRISTIAN OBSERVER.

(New Series.)

No. 10.-OCTOBER, 1840.

I.-A few notes on Lower Egypt.-The Pyramids, their size, form, origin and design, with reflections.-Singular fate of the Mummies,-Ancient Memphis,-Fulfilment of Scripture Prophecies. By Rev. A. DUFF, D. D.

(Continued from page 518.)

Who has not at times been so overcome by accounts of the "Eternal Pyramids," as to desire to be left alone to lose himself in a reverie of contemplation and wonder? We have read of travellers, who, when they first beheld these enormous piles indenting their forms on the clear blue sky, declared that for some time they "remained motionless"-that, on recovering from the primary sensation, their "enthusiasm amounted almost to madness, and they shouted applause to the magnificent spectacle!" We were therefore prepared, and really expected to be astonished. Soon after the dawn of a glorious morn, while passing the point where the Delta commences, a few miles below Cairo, by the separation of the stream into its two main branches, we first beheld, at a considerable distance to the right, the peaks of the two great Pyramids of Ghizeh shooting up, Parnassus-like, from an apparently common body. As we approached more nearly opposite, the gap or opening between them began to widen and descend, till at last they presented themselves from base to summit as two distinct and independent fabrics. There being nothing in two sharp peaks, shining like fiery wedges in the full radiance of the rising sun, to excite unwonted surprise, we still waited in earnest expectation of the uprising of a sensation of deepest wonder. At length the naked base of the Libyan rock appeared; upon it the great Pyramids stood out fully disclosed to view ;-and yet no emotion whatever of the anticipated astonishment! On

the contrary, we felt an almost resistless propensity to give way to that opposite emotion of derision and contempt which is ever apt to spring up, when it is discovered or imagined that one has been made the unconscious dupe of trick and delusive artifice. We neither experienced, nor could experience any feeling or sentiment of wonder whatsoever. Disappointed at our own disappointment, we could only be astonished to think what others, standing where we were and placed as strangers in precisely similar circumstances, could possibly have found to be astonished at. What could be the cause of so unexpected a result? It seemed to be this. From the vast breadth of the base, compared with the altitude of the rapidly tapering summit, and from the entire absence of adjacent objects of known dimensions, whereby to measure them, the elevation appeared to the eye, at the distance of a few miles, exceedingly diminitive. Many glass-works in Great Britain at about the same distance have struck our eye as being alike lofty and magnificent. Then again, their enbrowned sun-burnt aspect so much resembled the sterile sand of the desert; they looked so plain, so bare, so smooth, so meaningless from top to bottom-without doorway, or window, or arch, or colonnade, or turret, or spire, or dome, or gilded pinnacle, or any other wonted external symbol which could convey an impression of wisdom, skill, or design; beauty, proportion, or utility—that an isolated fragment of rock, or conical mound of earth, or artificial cairn of stones on the crest of a mountain-ridge, has often attracted and far more powerfully rivetted our attention.

Nevertheless, it was impossible to follow the first impulse and abruptly turn away from monuments which have excited the admiration of every Egyptian traveller from Herodotus to Belzoni, and of every Egyptian conqueror from Alexander to Napoleon-monuments, which have been alternately represented as royal sepulchres, astronomical observatories, or firetemples-monuments, therefore, whose construction, form, and internal repositories might well be supposed capable of revealing a few of the secrets of primitive art, somewhat of the progress of early science, and not a little of the character and migrations of the most ancient elemental and mythologic worship. Hence, we determined on a closer inpection. Accordingly, accompanied with a few friends, we started from Cairo about noon; passed the palace and pleasure grounds of Ibrahim Pasha, bestud with canals and ponds, too often, at that season, mere reservoirs of stagnant greenish water, and trees powdered over with perpetual dust; crossed the river close by the island of Rhodah, in which is preserved the famous Nilometer or instrument for marking the progress and height of the annual

inundation, and the loamy surface of which, under the direction of two Scotsmen, in the service of the Pasha, has been converted into the most beautiful garden in Egypt; and, finally, towards evening reached the Pyramids of Ghizeh, on the elevated ridge of the rocky boundary of the Libyan desert, distant about ten miles from Grand Cairo. In traversing the seven or eight miles of fertile field between the river and the sterile margin of the desert, these mighty pyramidal piles were throughout full in view. Yet to the eye they seemed to undergo no change, When actually within a few hundred yards of us, they did not seem one whit larger than they appeared from the citadel of Cairo. The most enthusiastic admirer of the Pyramids amongst us,-who constantly raved about them in somewhat of the spirit and style of romance, and who to the last fully expected to be overwhelmed with a sense of the wonderful and sublime as he approached them-was now forced in the but terness of regret to exclaim, "Well, I must confess that I mes sadly disappointed." And so singular was the optical illusion as to their real size, that, it was not till we came up to the very base of the great Pyramid, walked round it, measuring the number of paces and keeping an account of the time;t wan not till we handled the large blocks, averaging three or four feet square, of regular super-imposed layers of which the pile was composed, and looking up, saw them gradually dimi nish into the size of bricks, and finally dwindle away into the size of marble balls ;-it was not till we had undergone the real toil and labour of the ascent, and standing on the summit, saw how the largest tumuli beneath had shrunk into mole-hills-it was not till after all this personal experience, that, moving a few paces from the base and casting our eyes fixedly along the steep acclivity, we were in any proportionate degree impressed with a sense of its real magnitude,

As the interior must be visited by torchlight, we resolved, though the shadows of evening had closed around us, to enter the great Pyramid. With the assistance of some attendant Arabe, we reached the opening on the north side, at the elevation of forty feet above the base-resembling the mouth of a cave scooped out of the solid rock. In a bending and painfully constrained attitude we proceeded along the low narrow and cheerless passages-in directions, ascending, descending, or horizontal -half suffocated with dust, smoke and heat. We then visited

the principal chambers-usually styled, the king's and queen's. In none of these, with the exception of a single sarcophagus, is aught to be found but bare and blackened walls-the largest not exceeding 18 feet in height, 18 in breadth, and 36 in length. Is this all which can be exbibited by the interior of

a pile which some of its admirers have pronounced "the most sublime, most wonderful, and most stupendous of all fabrics"—"the most ancient and yet most mighty monument of man's power and pride?"—was the first involuntary exclamation, when, restored to the natural upright posture, and fixed in the centre of the king's chamber, we looked round on its emptied sarcophagus and dark naked walls! Why, there is not in the British Empire a single mine of any note that may not boast of passages and chambers, which display vastly more skill, ingenuity, and even taste in the excavation of them! To stand in the centre of the great Pyramid and in the centre of St. Paul's :-what a contrast! The emotions generated in the former position are as mean and Tartarean as those generated in the latter are celestial and sublime.

Wearied, fatigued and disappointed, we retired to enjoy, if possible, two or three hours' slumber in one of the smaller tombs quarried out of the face of the contiguous rock-thus converting into a chamber of real repose for the living that which three thousand years ago was designed as the abode of imaginary repose for the dead-and causing a receptacle, which embodied in its professed design the sentiment of an ignorant superstitious age, to resound for once with the reading of the word of life, and the voice of prayer and praise to Jehovah, Lord of Hosts!

By break of day we hastened from our rocky dormitory to the apex of the Great Pyramid, and there witnessed the first rays of the sun, as they glittered over the domes and minarets of Cairo. The general view, making allowance for our relative position on the opposite side of the vale, was much the same as from the citadel of Saladin. In the one, as well as the other, the desert-the desert-was the universal boundary !-the desert, so happily symbolized as "an immense ocean of sand, like the real ocean with its flux and re-flux; its caravans which cleave it like navies ; its dromedaries which furrow it like boats and its simoons which agitate it like hurricanes.". The narrow valley of the Nile winded through this ocean of savage barrenness like a living stream of beauty and fertility. Between it and its desert boundary there was not contrast merely, but contrast so violent as to produce a painful sense of the incongruous or unnatural. The inquiry was forced upon us, How came fields of such emerald green to be so fringed and inwoven with the waste howling wilderness, that between fertility the most charming and sterility the most frightful, there is not any where the measurable fraction of a single footstep? In other lands, the rich verdure of the mead and noble