A BOSTON RAIL WA Y IN ASIA. 699 



prove that this accords with history. But this date, that he quotes, was only con- 

 jecture and disagrees materially with his own estimate. How much more reason- 

 able, if history be referred to, is the generally accredited date given in round numbers 

 by Napoleon at the battle of the Pyramids, "Soldiers, forty centuries look down upon 

 you." And then again the later dates agrees to an inch with its own record, in 

 another and entirely different manner, as we have before described. The prepon- 

 derance of proof is largely in favor of the later dates, as we have heretofore shown. 

 Proctor considers the entrance passage as built solely for astronomical purposes. 

 But what astronomical purpose could be accomplished by building the stones in 

 tn«; entrance passage with joints perpendicular or erect, at the point, which, ac- 

 cording to Prof. Smyth, corresponds with its erection B. C. 2,170. No ancient 

 time-marks of the ages have been so distinctly and indelibly recorded as this date 

 of the Great Pyramid, and apparently for a great purpose. Not till the fixed 

 stars are hurled from their orbits, and God Almighty's great clock in the Heaven s 

 wears out or gets out of order, can these date-records be obliterated. They are 

 where the conflagration of this globe can not destroy them. 



Now here is a definite period of about 1,550 years for twenty-two dynasties, 

 making an average of less than seventy-five years to a dynasty. We do not as- 

 sume that Egyptian dynasties had any fixed common measure of duration. But 

 we do say that where computation is based on mere hypothesis, some regard should 

 be shown to the proved average of much the greater portion. If we prove that 

 twenty-two out of twenty-six dynasties span over only about 1,550 years, on what 

 reasonable ground can we base a supposition that the three preceding dynasties 

 extended back to any very much more remote period? We have bridged over 

 the dates between Jeremiah and Solomon by four dynasties, and covered without 

 leaving a single chasm unspanned more than one and a half milleniums before 

 Solomon, by eighteen dynasties, back to the fourth, leaving only three more before 

 Pyramid times, to be accounted for by tradition, or based on hypothesis. 



Even if we adopt the earlier date now advocated by Proctor, it makes no dif- 

 ference with regard to the time before Cheops. For according to the most extrav- 

 agant date -stretchers, Menes the first King of the first dynasty, lived only from 

 600 to 800 years before Pyramid times. And such historians as Diodorus (whom 

 Proctor relies on for his early hstorical proof,) together with Herodotus, Eratos- 

 thanes and Manetho, all regarded Menes not only as the first mortal King of 

 Egypt, but they were not backward in asserting their belief that he was identical 

 with Misraim the grand-son of Noah. 



Whoever can, let him give us a more rational and reliable history of Egypt- 

 ian origin and dates from a monumental stand-point. 



A BOSTON RAILWAY IN ASIA. 



A company was organized in Boston, February 8, under a charter from Mas- 

 sachusetts, dated February 6, 1880, for the purpose of constructing and operating 



