32 



panics are now similarly engaged in this town. They give employ- 

 ment to six hundred men, in quarrying, hammering, &c., whose 

 average wages are $500 a year — making an aggregate annual 

 disbursement of $300,000. Probably, the sum which has been 

 paid for labor at the quarries during the last ten years, has not 

 been less than $3,000,000. If this amount had been obtained 

 for gold or silver, it would have produced an excitement in the 

 country. The supply of stone is apparently inexhaustible. It is 

 valued in the quarry at one cent per cubic foot. When the 

 Granite Railway Company purchased their land here, they paid 

 about $40 an acre for the greater part ; but for the quarry 

 proper, they paid $1000 an acre. The deeper the quarry is 

 worked the better is the quality of the stone. 



Among the noted buildings which have been built of the Quincy 

 granite, are the Custom House, Merchants Exchange, and Court 

 House, Boston ; Custom Houses of New Orleans, Mobile, Provi- 

 dence, and Portland. Exchange, and Astor House, New York. 

 The celebrated Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor was also built of 

 this stone. The noble rows of stores on Commercial street, Franklin 

 street, and in other parts of Boston, built of this material, attract 

 the attention of every visitor to the city, and are acknowledged to 

 be unsurpassed in appearance in this or any other country. Some 

 trials which have lately been made in sculpturing the Quincy 

 granite, show that it is susceptible of being worked with good 

 effect. Monuments of ornamental character have been wrought 

 from it, and the success which lias attended the attempts to use it 

 for such purposes, has been such that arrangements have been 

 made to carry on this branch to considerable extent. 



The Granite Railway Company employ five or six yoke of 

 oxen in work about the quarries. They are of the largest size 

 that can be obtained, though it is necessary that they should unite 

 a good degree of activity and energy with great strength. We 

 have never seen finer oxen of this class than several of those 

 shown us by Mr. Penniman. They cost $150 to $200 per yoke ; 

 are so well fed that they would make good beef at any time ; are 

 worked about three years on the average, when with a little 

 additional feeding and a short term of rest, they are sold to 

 the butcher for about the amount of the first cost. They are fed 

 chiefly with Indian corn meal and hay. 



Several places were visited in West Roxbury. Arthur W. 

 Austin, of this town, has a farm of seventy-two acres — thirty-one 

 of which, however, have been added during the last year. All 

 the buildings have been erected by Mr. A., who has resided here 

 for fourteen years. He has made striking improvements. His 

 first object was to enclose the land with a permanent fence, which 

 has been erected in the shape of very handsome faced wall, of so 



