424 
THE PYRAMIDS OF MEROE. 
interment to Cairo. A bad imitation of the mosque 
at Khartoom marks the place where this tragedy was 
enacted. 
We left for Meroe, the ancient capital of Ethiopia, 
before sunrise of the 21st. Date-palms, we observed, 
were here more frequently irrigated, and the doom- 
palm grew wild. The bunder, or port, from which 
Meroe (called by the natives Tarabil Kobosheea, or 
Pyramids of Kobosheea) is visited, may be either Ko- 
bosheea or Budjerewa; we chose the latter, as the 
wind was not favourable for landing at the former. 
The pyramids are seen two miles across a plain, upon 
the right bank, near some low elongated hills. To 
visit them during the heat of the day it is desirable 
to have riding donkeys, which, with common wooden 
saddles, may be obtained at either starting-point. A 
man carries water, and you make straight for the 
ruins over a plain strewed with small pieces of clay of 
curious shapes and lustrous colours. There are three 
groups of pyramids. The first group consists of fifteen, 
dismantled to half their original height, and built 
apparently, as to site, without any regular system or 
order. A pyramidal shell of masonry 24 feet square, 
built without lime, and eight feet thick, had .been filled 
with the rubble of the country. The sandstone blocks 
with which they had been faced were now so soft that 
a knife could cut them. The second group, consisting 
of 18 or more, half a mile farther east, are in a better 
state of preservation, and have their figures of men 
and animals wonderfully complete. We ascended one 
having ten tiers, each tier a span and a half high, 
and diminishing in breadth as you reach the summit. 
The porches or entries into several pyramids of this* 
