J 90 2'Ji'Ai\SACTI0i\S OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



feet high to the dome roof. The area of the ground floor was 773,000 

 equare feet, or eighteen acres, being three times that of the Coliseum, 

 and of the galleries 217,000, and of the glass 900,000. There was 

 3,500 tons of wrought iron, and 400 tons of cast iron used in its 

 construction. It was built in nine mouths with the labor of about 

 2,000 men. The Paris building was an oval of 1,550 and 1,250 feet 

 diameter, the outer court being 110 feet wide and eighty-two feet 

 high, equivalent to a room 4,400 feet long, and 110 feet wide, or 

 thirty-one acres area. There are three Egyptian obelisks in Eome, 

 brought there by Augustus and Caligula. The largest being the one 

 now in front of St. Peter's, weighs 275 tons, and the vessel which 

 brought it fi'om Egypt was the largest which had, up to that time, 

 "ever been seen upon the sea." It is said when the engineer, 

 Fontana, moved one of these columns to the Piazza del Popolo, 

 in 1589, when it had been raised nearly to its poise, he found 

 that the rope lashings had stretched so much that the main fall 

 came "block to block," and it was impossible to fleet without 

 lowering the column to tke ground. While he and his associates 

 were discussing how they could gain but one inch more, an old 

 sailor came along, and as soon as he was told of the difliculty, sang 

 out, " Why don't you wet the lashings, you lubbers ?" The engineer 

 took the hint, wet the ropes, which shrank enough to carry the column 

 over the poise, and saved weeks of dangerous labor. Almost the 

 same thing occurred in my practice. One of the long iron piles 

 which I was driving into the bed of the Harlem had lurched a foot 

 out of line. The most powerful purchases that I could rig would not 

 move it. A sailor, in passing, said : " Make all fast, and wet your 

 falls." This was done, and accomplished the result. While upon 

 this subject of transporting great weights, I beg to call yom* atten- 

 tion to some of those moved in modern time. The largest stone in 

 any erection in the world is the granite base of the column of Peter 

 the Great, at St. Petersburg, which weighs 3,000,000 pounds, or one- 

 tiftli more than the largest stone at Baalbec. It was transported fif- 

 teen miles by land on a wooden tramway, with cannon balls for 

 rollei-s. I have already jnentioned the transport of tlie column of 

 Luxor, and I might have added that it rests upon a single block of 

 granite of 120 tons, brought from Britany sixty miles by land. There 

 is a stone, the tazza, in the Treasury building at Washington, which 

 weighed, when quarried, 300 tons, and, aftoi' being roughly worked 

 down to 100 tons, was transported by sea 600 miles. And another, 



