PYRAMIDS OF GEEZEH, FROM THE NILE.

 

 

WHEN the river is low and the intersecting canals dry and practicable, the journey from Grand Cairo to the Pyramids of Geezeh is a ride of little more than an hour. The traveller mounts in the streets of New Cairo and rides to Old Cairo, where he crosses the Nile at the Madiah, or ferry, to a village the nearest to the Pyramids, though five miles distant from them, called Geezeh, whence the association of its name with these wonders of Egypt and the world.

    From across the Nile the appearance of these stupendous constructions is that which is here represented. Every traveller has read of them, and all are acquainted with their measured magnitudes; yet, thus seen across the river from Old Cairo, few have looked upon them without a feeling of disappointment; they appear to be unimportant specks in the desert. When the approach can be made to them in an hour, and directly through a beaten track in the fields, they enlarge more rapidly upon the vision of the observer; but, if the inundation of the Nile be high, a very circuitous route of nearly twenty miles by the canals must be taken; then they dwell upon the eye; which, kept constantly upon them, receives so much less of immediate effect than the imagination had promised to the traveller, that his disappointment is scarcely overcome even when he arrives near to the bases of the Pyramids. At length, however, they fail not to fill his mind with an idea of their vastness, which he could never have preconceived.

 

    Dr. Richrdson’s Travels.                            Roberts’s Journal.