The Warner weekly sun. (Warner, Brown Co., Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1885, 1885-03-13
THE GREAT MONUMENT.
Higher but Not Wonderful az the or...
Works Of Antiquity,

washington Letter TO Cleveland Leader.
The symmetry of its sides as II stando
away up there running into the blua
sky, is beauty and sublimity combined
and this sublimity increases as one ooes
nearer and carer. At the base Of tbe
mound it overpowers you, aud If you
will, as l did, climb up close to one Of
those big walls and putting your chin
against the marble, gaze straight IN
for five hundred feet, il will take You,
breath away. Hereit seems the Chhi;rasa
wall running up into heaven-the Tower
OF Babel approaching completion-or
Jacobs ladder nodded in marble. Look
at the marble in front of you, nowl II
is beautiful stone, as polished as Michael
Angeles statue of David and speckled
with scales or spots of frosted silver.
Standing by the monument one is
greatly impressed with the mechanic al
skill required to build it. Its stones
are great blocks, in some cases nine
feet long, two feet thick, and three and
more feet wide. There are more than
$4,000 of them. They are of white
marble, and weigh several tons each.
The ingenuity which can raise such
stones several hundred feet above the
ground seems the triumph of mechani-
cal skill, and one is inclined to pat him
self on the back in that he belongs to
an age so far advanced in the march Of
progress. He is inclined to sheer at the
works of the past, and to think that the
massive structure before him will out
last the ages. A second thought bids
him pause. He remembers the saying
in regard to the Roman Coliseum,
"While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand,
When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall,
And when Rome falls, with it shall fall the
world"
Still the Coliseum, when it was built
at the beginning of the Christian era,
had q better chance of lasting than the
Washington monument. 1t was a far
more wonderful structure, and the me-
chanical skill required in building il
was quite as great. The largest theatre
to-day in the world will not seat 7, 600
spectators. The Coliseum had seats
for ST ,000and standing room for 90 600
more. Its walls were made of heavier
blocks than those in the Washington
monument, and they ran 157 feet hign.
It's interior was so large that the Wash
ington monument could have been laid
inside of it without disturbing its ma
senry, and OF the third Of The the 8
gantic structures which remains after
Rome has been building from it and
ravaging itfor centuries, the materials
alone are said to be worthtwo million and
a half of dollars. This is twice as much
rs the cost of the Washington monument
and FIVE hundred thousand dollars to
! SPARE.
1t was a greater work than this to
erect the Colossus of Rhodes, that m
mense brazen statue, lao feet high,
which stood across the Straits of the
Hellspont so that tall-masted boats
could sail between its huge legs with
out injury. This statue weighed nearly
800, 600 pounds, and after an earthquake
overthrow it-as one indeed may some
time do the monument-its ruins lay
for nine centuries, and at the end OF
that time it took a caravan OF 800 cam.
els to carry the metal away.
Look ct Pempey's column which still
stands overlooking the Mediterranean
on the outside of Alexandria In Egypt.
A solid shaft, sixty-seven feet high and
nine feet in diameter, of the heaviest o
red granite, raised upon o pedestal loa
feet high. The mechanical skill
required to elevate that immense shaft
and to bring il a Thousand miles down
the Nileis quite equal to anything OF the
present. And then the pyramidsl the
top of the great pyramid has q plat
form thirty-two feet square, only three
feet less than this Washington monu-
ment where its pyramidal top begins.
The blocks of which the pyramids are
constructed are much larger than those
in the Washington monument, and y
is said that it took ten years to make the
road over which to carry those heavy
stones. 1t took whole cities OF men 70
build the pyramid of Cheops, and 40.
cording to Herodotus the radishes and
onions which the workmen ate COST
once and one half the price of the Wash
ington monument. This pyramid has
an area of thirteen acres at its base and
its height is 4S3 feet. 1t must have
cost billions to build it, and resting ID
the dry atmosphere of the desert ons
would think that here at least would
be a morsel too hard and dry foi
the tooth 81 time. But the wind
and the weather have eaten ever into
the pyramids and their beauty and
splendor show the effect Of decay. The
Washington monument in the humid
atmosphere Of America, as it breatns
year by year the exhalations OF the
swampy Potomac, will have a far short
err career. The seeds of nature inylsl'