Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 February 1881 — Tennessee Marble. [ARTICLE]

Tennessee Marble.

Mr. John J. Craig, of Knoxville' Tenn., says that the United States Government is now working successfully a quarry of white stone in the immediate vicinity of that city which is pronounced by competent judges to be superior to anything of the kind found elsewhere in the United States for building and all out-door purposes. It is a highly crystallized limestone marble—and as it comes from the hammer or chisel is almost perfectly white; when polished it shows a faint, pinkish blush, most delicate and beautiful; long exposure to the atmosphere seems to whiten and harden it, a sort of glass-like enamel forming over its surface and rendering it almost impervious to dampness and stains of any kind. A column of this marble, which has been standing in Knoxville more than thirty years, and which has never been toucheid with brush or soap, is as white and clean to-day as it was the day it was first exposed to the storms and sqnshine of our fickle climate, The text-

ure and working quality of the marble is unsurpassed. It is neither too hard nor too soft, but exactly aoft enough to allow the sculptor to work it without force and trace on it the finest lines of finished form, and yet hard enough to retain these lines in all their original delicacy, unimpaired by wind or rain, for generations to come. The quantity of the' marble is unlimited. Knoxville is surrounded by whole mountains of it. Facilities for transportation are now good and daily better. Car loads are being daily shipped to all sections of the country, and the absence of capital alone prevents the quarrying of it from soon developing into one cf the most important industries in that singularly favored but as yet almost unknown section. — Scientific American.