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84 towards the centre, which the knowledge he had acquired satisfied him concealed the passage. Having cleared the front of these stones, the entrance proved to be a passage only four feet high, and three feet six inches wide, formed of large blocks of granite, which rapidly descended towards the centre for upwards of a hundred feet. Nearly all this passage was filled up with large stones, which were slowly drawn out with great labour; but no sooner was this accomplished than the explorers came upon a stone portcullis, which appeared at first sight to put an end to all their hopes of entering the pyramid; but, by raising it a little at a time with levers, and propping it with stones as they proceeded, the portcullis was at length raised sufficiently for an Arab holding a candle to squeeze his way in, who returned, saying that the place within was very fine. Belzoni now continued to raise the portcullis, until at last he had made the entrance large enough to squeeze himself in, and, after thirty days' incessant labour, he had the satisfaction of finding himself in the way to the central chamber of one of the two great pyramids of Egypt. The new passage was found to terminate in a perpendicular shaft of fifteen feet in depth, which the explorers descended by means of a rope, when they entered another passage descending at the same angle. The labyrinth into which they had entered was, however, not yet exhausted. A passage leading upwards now met their eyes, of greater height than the previous ones. Its sides glittered with beautiful "arborizations" from the nitre by which the mummies are embalmed, some of these looking like the fleece of a white lamb, others resembling huge leaves and other fantastic shapes. At