Potomac,
in Maryland. As specimens of this, we would refer to the .columns in
the House of Representatives at Washington, which are twenty feet high,
and two feet in diameter.
c. The
Verd-Antique, of New Haven, Connecticut. This marble is intermixed with
serpentine veins, and makes a most beautiful appearance. There are
inexhaustible quarries of it at New Haven and Milford; it bids fair to
rival every other ornamental stone in the world. Four chimney-pieces of
this mineral were purchased for the Capitol at Washington; and
I lately examined a splendid centre table, wholly cut from this marble,
that was exhibited at the tenth annual fair of the American Institute.
It is to be hoped that some company may undertake to introduce this
marble more extensively into notice, for it does not yet appear to be
sufficiently known among our wealthy citizens: the enterprise would be
well rewarded. Large slabs may be seen at the New York Lyceum of
Natural History, and in the cabinet of Yale College, New Haven. I
possess a very fine, large slab, polished. Portsmouth, Vermont,
likewise furnishes splendid verd-antique, specimens of which may be
seen at the American Institute, in New York.
d. Berkshire
county, in Massachusetts, may justly be called the marble pillar of the
United States; and, as Professor Hitchcock remarks, the inhabitants of
that county cannot but regard their inexhaustible deposits of marble as
a rich treasure to themselves, and an invaluable legacy to their
posterity. The towns, West Stockbridge, Lanes-borough, New Ashford,
Sheffield, New Marlborough, and Adams, in that county, keep thousands
of hands constantly working in their quarries. In 1827, two thousand
seven hundred tons of marble were exported from that town ; and in
1828, a block of from fifty to sixty feet square, and eight thick, was
raised by one charge of gunpowder.
