Thunder Stone. In Saint Petersburg.
A mass of red granite was pulled from a swamp in 1768-Weighed 1,500 tonnes then. Raw thing of nature.
Men moved it not machines, not beasts, just men-Four hundred of them - They waited for winter, for the ground to freeze hard-Laid down tracks of iron.
Rolled it on brass, spheres, primitive ball bearing-Two capstans turned by hand, it crept six kilometers, nine months of mean work-All to hold a statue of a tsar. On its journey, they carved it-Chipped away 250 tonnes, a moving sculpture.
They took it to Neva River-it was 1,250 tonnes, now, still the heaviest.
Other stones lie in quarries, larger perhaps--One is the Stone Of The Pregnant Woman, might push 1500 tonnes-But they were never moved, never set in place-Thunder Stone was.