w
grade in the lower part of Greenwich-street. It is also no uncommon
thing to see a ship of a thousand tons, with her cargo on board, raised
out of the water at the Hydraulic Dock, to stop a leak, or make some
unexpected but necessary repairs.

"In 1769, the Count Marino Carburi, of Cephalonia, moved a mass of
granite, weighing three million pounds, to St. Petersburg, to serve as a
base for the equestrian statue of Peter the Great, to be erected in the
square of that city, after the design of M. Falconet, who discarded the
common mode of placing an equestrian statue on a pedestal, where,
properly speaking, it never could be; and suggested a rock, on which the
hero was to have the appearance of galloping, but suddenly be arrested
at the sight of an enormous serpent, which, with other obstacles, he
overcomes for the happiness of the Muscovites. None but a Catherine II.,
who so gloriously accomplished all the great ideas of that hero, could
have brought to perfection this extraordinary one of the artist. An
immense mass was accidentally found buried 15 feet in a bog, four miles
and a half from the river Neva and fourteen from St. Petersburg. It was
also casually that Carburi was at the city to undertake the removal of
it. Nature alone sometimes forms a mechanic, as she does a sovereign, a
general, a painter, a philosopher. The expense of this removal was only
70,000 rubles and the materials left after the operation were worth
two-thirds of that sum. The obstacles surmounted do honor to the human
understanding. The rock was 37 feet long, 22 high, and 21 broad, in the
form of a parallelopipedon. It was cleft by a blast, the middle part
taken away, and in the cavity was constructed a forge for the wants of
the journey. Carburi did not use cylindrical rollers for his
undertaking, these causing an attrition sufficient to break the
strongest cables. Instead of rollers he used balls composed of brass,
tin, and calamina, which rolled with their burden under a species of
boat 180 feet long, and 66 wide. This extraordinary spectacle was
witnessed by the whole court, and by Prince Henry of Prussia, a branch
from the great Frederick. Two drums at the top sounded the march; forty
stone-cutters were continually at work on the mass during the journey,
to give it the proposed form--a singularly ingenious idea. The forge was
always at work: a number of other men were also in attendance to keep
the balls at proper distances, of which there