COLONNA MUSSOLINI ARRIVES AT COAST

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6945, 26 June 1929, Page 8

COLONNA MUSSOLINI ARRIVES AT COAST

Sixty Foot Monolith

TOOK YEAR TO CONVEY GREAT STONE 30 MILES QUARRIED AT CARRARA.

United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright. Received Tuesday 7.0 p.m. LONDON, June 24. Tho Manchester Guardian’s correspondent at Carrara states: — “A famous marble monolith, 60 feet in height and weighing 3SO tons, which was cut out of the marble quarry at Carrara a year ago, was launched to-day in a specially-designed raft, to be shipped to the mouth of the Tiber to await the full tido in the autumn.

“The monolith will be erected in a new forum in Rome and will be dedicated to the Ducc. It will be called Colonna Mussolini.

“It has taken a year to bring the great column 30 miles from the quarry. Sometimes it was launched on a swift mountain torrent; sometimes it was drawn by 100 oxen steep mountain roads. It was' encased in a wooden structure and propelled on large logs of wood placed underneath, an engineering feat only equalled by the Egyptians with Cleopatra’s Needle, which is on the Thames Embankment. The monolith is the largest and most beautiful cvei quarried in Italy and is of a pale gray hue. ’ ’