Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/85

Rh title of a once famous tract by the eminent Nonconformist divine, Richard Baxter—together hale or propel you up the flight of yard-high steps by which you gain the apex of the Pyramid.

The exactitude of this method of computation is gravely impaired by the introduction of these four indeterminates; for there is certainly many a traveller to whom the mere fact that the ascent of the Pyramid of Cheops has exhausted him and "pumped" three Arabs would afford no solid ground for the inference that it is one of the wonders of the world. Figures help us no better. What is the use of knowing, as a bare proposition of linear measurement, that the Great Pyramid is 451 feet high, and that each of its sides is 250 yards long at its base? There is just as little use in it, as there is in any of those ingenious comparisons with domestic (and now therefore distant) objects, whereby people attempt to bring the proportions of this mighty sepulchre within the grasp of their