Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/430

 402

��Popular Science MontJily

���The march of the Confederate Army as it is to be immortalized in the Uving granite of Stone Mountain, near Atlanta, Georgia. On the face of this mountain hundreds of men will be

Carving the Confederate Army in a Granite Mountain

��A^^IONUMENT to be carved out of the living granite of a mountain, a monument of flawless granite two miles long and a thousand feet high — to be built as an everlasting memorial to the people of the South and the cause of the Confederacy — such is the gigantic task allotted to Gutzon Borglum, one of America's foremost sculptors.

This great monument is to be carved from the solid granite composing Stone Mountain, which is located near Atlanta, Georgia, and which is called "the larg- est pebble in the world," since it is one solid stone, two miles long, without a flaw or a fissure in its entire surface.

Upon the face of the mountain hun- dreds of men will be engaged for eight years in carving companies of giant fig- ures representing the Confederate Army and its famous generals on the march. Should Mr. Borglum wish to complete the task alone, he would have to live for centuries. The central portion of the group, bearing the likeness of the leaders of the army on horseback, will be approx- imately thirty-five to fifty feet high. The line of marchers will be nearly two thou- sand feet in len<;th.

��Each State of the Confederacy will be represented by one of the generals who led the Southern Armies, and the char- acters will be selected by committees from the various states. Thirteen im- mense columns will also be cut in the base of the mountain, to represent the thirteen Confederate States.

The difficulties of construction, Mr. Borglum asserts, will not be great. He will build a studio, about one hundred feet long, squarely upon the axis of the face of the mountain, and from three- quarters of a mile to one mile from its face. In the side of the studio he will have a window of such length as will show the full field of the mountain in- tended for the figures. Then he will draw the figures on the window to scale, cross-lining it, and on the mountain, as it appears on the window, he will draw in the entire work on the window itself. By a little imagination, the drawings on the glass will appear as figures on the actual stone.

By shifting his position the sculptor can shift the whole scheme of his de- sign to any part of the mountain ; and by moving towards or away from the

�� �