The literary remains of the late C.F.T. Drake / [edited with a memoir by Walter Besant].
- Charles Drake
- Date:
- 1877
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The literary remains of the late C.F.T. Drake / [edited with a memoir by Walter Besant]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
21/386 (page 7)
![thing to be thought of no more, and that all future winters would have to be spent in the sunny south. The letters he wrote during his journey were full of brightness and hope, showing that it was a time of great enjoyment. Here, for instance, is an extract from a letter which naturally assumed the form of a Journal, and permits itself to be quoted. The style curiously contrasts with that of the carefully weighed reports which he afterwards drew up for the Palestine Exploration Fund. ‘ On the Nile, Dec. 22, 1868. ‘ On the fourteenth I went to the Pyramids of Cheops. We left the hotel about 8 A.M., and down through Old Cairo to the banks of the Nile, which we crossed, and found our donkeys waiting for us on the other side; we then rode about six miles, till we came to the edge of the desert where the Pyramids are. At first it is utterly impossible to realise their enormous size (460 ft. high), but after a time, by comparison with the men at the foot and those on the top, one begins to realise what it really is. Of course we went up to tlie top, but nothing would ever induce me to do it again—it is a most awful path; the ascent is made as easy as ])ossible, for two Arabs hold your hands, and another pushes when necessary, but as the blocks vary in height from three to four feet, it is no easy work to get to the top, but once there the view is fine; one sees](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b29351625_0021.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
