XXIX RETURN FROM WORK, CARRARA, ITALY
I have never seen anything so impressive as the quarries at Carrara. The great white masses one can see as the train passes Carrara station, or from Pisa, are not snow, as many think, but marble—high on the tops of the mountains, quarried for centuries by regiments of men who toil on foot, in trains or are swung up in baskets to the summit. Then down the roughest track, only smoothed by the blocks, the marble is dragged by teams of oxen, driven by men sitting backward, to the railroad or the harbor. The contrast between the dazzling blocks, the blue sky and black trees, and untouched mountain side is intense.
XXX THE NEW BAY OF BAIE, ITALY
I have no doubt I shall be told I am cheekily reckless to tackle Turner's subject—I have even known a collector to get rid of this print with scorn—but I am glad I drew it. I do not know if Turner made his drawing from the same point. Just where, after the long climb up the hill from Naples, between the cliffs, the road begins to descend, it turns, and all this is before you. I do not know whether it will be in existence when the book appears, or battered to ruin, but I do know that nowhere in the world is there such a combination of classic and mediæval motives and the spirit of modern work as in this view from the top of the hill looking down on the land and the sea near Naples.
