VIEW LOOKING TOWARDS THE PYRAMIDS OF DASHOUR 
AND SACCARA. WITH A SLAYE-BOAT ON THE NILE. 
The breadth of the Nile and the flat character of its banks and its valleys, about 
twenty miles above Cairo, are particularly observed in the neighbourhood of the 
Pyramids of Dashour and Saccara—structures which are highly characteristic of their 
locality. Those of Saccara are the most distant in the view: they are chiefly built of 
brick, one only being wholly of stone. The base of the largest is a parallelogram, about 
three hundred and fifty feet long on its north and south faces, and three hundred and 
ninety-four on its east and west sides. It is built in degrees or stages, and is surrounded 
by an inclosure. Besides this Great Pyramid, there are ten others, of smaller dimensions. 
Some of these Pyramids were opened by the Baron von Minutoli in 1821, and in 
1837, by Mr. Perring, whose surveys and researches into the construction of these 
extraordinary works are fully detailed in Colonel Yyse’s “Pyramids of Gizeh.” 
The stone Pyramids of Dashour form the group nearest to the observer in the 
view. There is a striking peculiarity in the form of the southernmost of these: its 
summit has been finished at a different angle from that of the faces with which it 
was commenced; and Wilkinson thinks, from its being the only one of this form, that 
the angle was depressed to complete it more speedily. The change greatly diminished 
the height which it would have had if the original angle had been continued. Its 
base, measured by Colonel Yyse, is seven hundred feet square. This Pyramid was 
entered by Mr. Melton, an English traveller, in 1660; and again, twenty years later, 
by M. le Brun. In 1763 it was visited by Mr. Davison, whose researches in Egypt 
gave his name to a chamber which he discovered in the Pyramid of Cheops, the 
largest of the group of Geezeh. The last examination of the Pyramids of Dashour was 
by Mr. Perring and Colonel Yyse; by whom some matters interesting to the Egyptian 
antiquary were discovered, which are fully related in the Appendix to Colonel Yyse’s 
Work. 
A picturesque interest has been given to the scene by Mr. Roberts’s introduction 
of a Slave-Boat, which he thus describes in his Journal:—“A boat of a very different 
description came alongside of mine this afternoon: it was a slave-boat, of small dimensions 
for its purpose, laden with a cargo of female slaves from Kordofan, and owned by a 
hoary villain, a Greek, who had the effrontery to tell me that he was a Christian. 
Except that they had been torn from their friends—an evil distressing enough in 
itself—the slave-trade here seems unaccompanied by any of the horrors which attend 
that infernal traffic in the passage from the western coast of Africa; for, except the 
confinement in the small space allotted to them in the boats, they are little exposed, 
in a climate like this, to inclement weather. The trade must be profitable, since such 
a journey could be advantageously taken with eleven only of these poor wretches for 
the market. Five were of a dark copper colour, and beautifully formed; and six 
were negresses, all young and in their prime, their hair plaited as in Nubia, but free 
