REGENT MEASURES AT THE GREAT PYRAMID. 387 



enough to fill several manuscript books, and will be accessible when required ; 

 but at present I will only ask your attention to a few of the results ; and these 

 results should begin by bearing on some of the very simplest propositions that 

 have ever been ventured concerning the Pyramid ; for we cannot at first starting 

 be too sceptical of anything like mere assertion, and must try to prove our way 

 as we proceed. 



Proposition 1. 



Let this model, if you please, on the table, represent the figure of the Great 

 Pyramid; drawing No. 1 (Plate XXVI.), a vertical section of the same through 

 its central axis ; and drawing No. 2 (Plate XXVIL), a ground plan ; then, many 

 theorists and travellers have assumed as exact, what is evidently true approxi- 

 mately ; viz., that the base of the Great Pyramid is a square. 



But they have only assumed, asserted, or concluded, not measured it ; and 

 meanwhile, a Dr Vansleb has declared in his published Travels, that he could see 

 very easily that all the Pyramids had invariably two out of their four base-sides 

 much longer than the other two ; and he tried to measure the amount of such 

 difference at the Great Pyramid with a long rope. But the outside of the monu- 

 ment was so ruinous, and its base so encumbered with heaps, nay positive hills, 

 of broken stones, that his efforts at measure were defeated ; and yet he leaves 

 his readers under the impression that the anomaly he had previously indicated, 

 must have been at least a sixth or so of one of the sides. 



To such a statement, then, my labours answer thus, — first, having measured 

 again and again about the huge monument, correcting for errors of dilapidation 

 and encumbrance of the ground as well as I could, there was shown to be no error 

 in the length of any of the four base-sides, equal to the 80th part of one of them. 



Second, during the last fortnight of our party being at the Pyramid, there came 

 there with a following from the works of the Suez Canal, Mr William Aiton, the 

 well-known and most energetic railway contractor of Glasgow ; and he set his 

 people digging at all the four corners of the Pyramid, until they had not only 

 rediscovered the two corner sockets, marking the original size of the northern 

 side of the monument, and which had been first discovered by the French savants 

 in 1799, but until they had also come upon the other two corner sockets, which 

 had never been seen by mortal eye for the last thousand years at least. 



Then, all four corners of the ancient base of the Pyramid were visible at once, 

 and were found to be clearly cut in the solid and monolithic rock of the hill ; and 

 Mr Aiton's chief assistant, Mr Inglis, having measured every one of the four base- 

 sides from socket to socket, but still under excessive difficulties from the encum- 

 brance of the intervening ground, found the greatest difference of any two sides, 

 including error of observation, not more than -^-gth. 



And, thirdly, I was enabled, though in a rather round- about way by reference 

 to the Pole star, but with the magnificently powerful alt-azimuth circle before you, 



