titude attained by the towers of many churches, and the "Pyramid of
the Sun" at Teotihuacan did not fall much short of it; but the mass was
immense, the masonry was excellent, and the ingenuity shown in the
construction was great. Sunk in the rock from which the pyramid rose,
was a series of sepulchral chambers. One, the largest, almost directly
under the apex of the pyramid, was empty. In another, which had an
arched roof, constructed in the most careful and elaborate way, was
found the sarcophagus of the king, Men-kau-ra, to whom tradition
assigned the building, formed of a single mass of blue-black basalt,
exquisitely polished and beautifully carved, externally eight feet long,
three feet high, and three feet broad, internally six feet by two. In
the sarcophagus was the wooden coffin of the monarch, and on the lid of
the coffin was his name. The chambers were connected by two long
passages with the open air; and another passage had, apparently, been
used for the same purpose before the pyramid attained its ultimate size.
The tomb-chamber, though carved in the rock, had been paved and lined
with slabs of solid stone, which were fastened to the native rock by
iron cramps. The weight of the sarcophagus which it contained, now
unhappily lost, was three tons.

[Illustration: SECTION OF THE THIRD PYRAMID, SHOWING PASSAGES.]

[Illustration: TOMB-CHAMBER OF THE THIRD PYRAMID.]

The "Second Pyramid," which stands to the north-east of the Third, at
the distance of about two hundred and seventy yards, was a square of
seven hundred and seven feet each way, and thus covered an area of
almost eleven acres and a half, or nearly double that of the greatest
building which Rome ever produced--the Coliseum. The sides rose at an
angle of 52 deg. 10'; and the perpendicular height was four hundred and
fifty-four feet, or fifty feet more than that of the spire of
Salisbury Cathedral. The cubic contents are estimated at 71,670,000
feet; and their weight is calculated at 5,309,000 tons. Numbers of this
vast amount convey but little idea of the reality to an ordinary reader,
and require to be made intelligible by comparisons. Suppose, then, a
solidly built stone house, with walls a foot thick, twenty feet of
frontage, and thirty feet of depth from front to back; let the walls be
twenty-four feet high and have a foundation of six feet; throw in
party-walls to one-third the extent of the main walls--and the result
will be a building containin