e external blocks are of a size with which modern builders scarcely
ever venture to deal, though the massiveness diminishes as the pyramid
is ascended. The bulk of the interior is, however, of comparatively
small stones; but even these are carefully hewn and squared, so as to
fit together compactly.

[Illustration: SECTION OF THE GREAT PYRAMID.]

[Illustration: KING'S CHAMBER AND CHAMBERS OF CONSTRUCTION, GREAT
PYRAMID.]

Further, there are the passages, the long gallery, the ventilation
shafts, and the sepulchral chambers all of them remarkable, and some of
them simply astonishing. The "Great Pyramid" guards three chambers. One
lies deep in the rock, about a hundred and twenty feet beneath the
natural surface of the ground, and is placed almost directly below the
apex of the structure. It measures forty-six feet by twenty-seven, and
is eleven feet high. The access to it is by a long and narrow passage
which commences in the north side of the pyramid, about seventy feet
above the original base, and descends for forty yards through the
masonry, and then for seventy more in the same line through the solid
rock, when it changes its direction, becoming horizontal for nine yards,
and so entering the chamber itself. The two other chambers are reached
by an ascending passage, which branches off from the descending one at
the distance of about thirty yards from the entrance, and mounts up
through the heart of the pyramid for rather more than forty yards, when
it divides into two. A low horizontal gallery, a hundred and ten feet
long, leads to a chamber which has been called "the Queen's"--a room
about nineteen feet long by seventeen broad, roofed in with sloping
blocks, and having a height of twenty feet in the centre. Another longer
and much loftier gallery continues on for a hundred and fifty feet in
the line of the ascending passage, and is then connected by a short
horizontal passage with the upper-most or "King's Chamber." Here was
found a sarcophagus believed to be that of King Khufu, since the name of
Khufu was scrawled in more than one place on the chamber walls.

[Illustration: GALLERY IN THE GREAT PYRAMID.]

The construction of this chamber--the very kernel of the whole
building--is exceedingly remarkable. It is a room of thirty-four feet in
length, with a width of seventeen feet, and a height of nineteen,
composed wholly of granite blocks of great size, beautifully polished,
and fitted together with great care.