343 
of Edinburgh, Session 1867 - 68 . 
realised until all these three heads have been carried out by com- 
petent parties, and simultaneously. 
Failure of efforts to have the Principles applied in 1864-5. 
I need hardly say, therefore, that when I went out to Egypt in 
1864, at my own private expense, and on the savings of a salary of 
L.300 per annum, I did not contemplate, of myself or unaided, 
measuring the base- sides of the G-reat Pyramid at an expense of 
L. 10, 000. Knowing, however, from my former experience on a 
trigonometrical survey, how the scientific part of the operations 
ought to be performed, I did all I could, before going to the 
Great Pyramid from Cairo, to urge the adoption of the necessary 
measures both on His Highness the Viceroy of Egypt and on 
Egyptian Society. But no one would look at the proposal. The 
expense of carrying out the preliminary head No. 2, frightened 
them all. They remembered that even Colonel Howard Vyse, who 
spent his money en prince , had only made three crosscuts into the 
rubbish-mound on the north side of the Pyramid's base, and had 
not attempted the far greater work of cutting through the length 
if it; while the similar mounds on the other three sides have re- 
mained unattempted in any way by any one for the last 700 years 
at least. And if no one in Cairo would undertake this operation 
No. 2, of course it was futile to ask them to enter into head No. 3; 
while it was likely to lead to premature and irreparable mischief 
being done to the fiducial points of the Pyramid, to ask them to 
undertake, or sanction my undertaking, what is implied under 
head No. 1, by itself. I had, therefore, to go out to the Great 
Pyramid unaided for that work ; leave the proper measurement of 
its base-sides as a legacy to richer men and future times ; and 
address myself to what I could do, alone, with my own hands and 
very modest apparatus. That accordingly formed my daily toil* 
from early morning to late at evening, during the whole four 
months I was at the Pyramid ; unassisted all that time by any 
other measurer, until the very last few days, when a new party 
* Since published in the 1st and 2d volumes of “ Life and Work at the 
Great Pyramid.” 
2 Y 
VOL. VI. 
