New Britain herald., 1926-08-20
CARRARA MARBLE
 FOR GRAVESTONES
Italian QuarrieS Are Very
 Ancient

Washington, D. C., Aug. 20.- White Carrara marble is reported chosen for the permanent crosses to mark the graves of American sol diers in France.
 Civilization stretching back to the centuries before the birth of Christ have used this marble. Carrara marble served to honor pagan gods before the Christian Diety. As the deeds of American legfons will be written" in Carrara, so were the deeds of Rome's legions.
 A 2,000- -Year-OId Description
 It is rare that a geographical de- scription can be used 2,000 years after it was written but here is one of the Carrar that stands the test:
 Of these Luna is a city and har- Dor; 1t is named by the Greeks the harbor and city of Selene (modern Marina di Carrara, port of Carrara). The city is not large, but the har- bor Is very fine and spacious, con- taining in itself numerous harbors, all of them deep near the shore, 1t is, in fact, an arsenal worthy of nation holding dominion for long time over so vast a sea. The har- bor is surrounded by lofty noun tains from whence you may view the sea and Sardinia and q great part of the coast on either side. Here are quarries of marble, both white and marked with green, so so numerous and large as to furnish tablets and columns of one block; and most of the material for the fine. works, both in Rome and other cities is furnished from hence. The transport of the marble is easy, as the quarries lie near the sea.
 That was written by Strabo Greek historian, a few years before the birth of Christ. ..--.
 Leonardo Originated Cutting
 Ships will call at the same harbor to bring away the white marble crosses for the American graves in France. The marble will come down from the lavender-tinted Carrara Mountains, scalloped against a blue Italian sky, via the leveled course of the Strada Ferrata. It will be cut out of quarries (there are more than 600 in the district) that prob ably served the Romans and the Medici and the Venetians beftre America was discovered. Indeed. the method of cutting marble in the auarries is supposed to have origi- mated with Leonardo da Ninci.
 Little needs to be added to strabo's description. The visitor first sees the great mounds of marble chips as dustlike whitewash smears on the sides of the steep ra- vines. The three ravines holding most of the quarries are tributary to Carrara, a city of 25.000 quarrymen, quarrymen's wives and children, and crippled quarrymen. Carrara is dusty with dust of prescious marble. It huns to the tune of 75 marble cutting factories, The noise of chip, chip, chip'is ever in the air. In Car rara even the poorest houses have ehaste white marble lintels and steps. The marble railway takes passengers free up the rayines where great white gashes memorial ize marble even as marble statues later memorialize men. Somewhere whistle blows. A pause. Then d dull explosion. Great blocks are swung out by booms to waiting wooden skids for ride down to the railroad, and down to the sea.
 Planned Mountain Memorial
 Carrara came near being the site of an enormous carving similar in concept to the Stone Mountain Me morial in Georgia which will carry the figures of Lee, Jackson, and other southern leaders. The sculptor who planned a gigantic statue over looking the sea, to be carved out of the Carrara marble mountains was Nichelangelo. He may have had his inspiration from the plan of Dino- crates to fashion Mt. Athos into a gigantic figure of Alexander looking out over the Aegean Sea. Neither plan was carried out.
 Michelangelo's David, at Florence, as well as his Noses and his Day and Night, Evening and Dawn, are all of Carrara marble selected on location, as it were. Canova's sta- tue of Napoleon I was carved out of a block of flawless Carrara as large as the body of the largest type of modern motor furniture van.