The Inside of the Lincoln Tomb

リンカーンが埋葬されているお墓の内部

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The door that leads us to the inside of the tomb is made of heavy metal. When you open it, you are in a dark corridor which leads to a rotunda with a Lincoln sculpture placed in its center. Usually, a site interpreter welcomes you. The interpreter rarely starts a conversation. But he or she is ready to answer any of your questions.

The sculpture was made by Daniel Chester French, who made it as the prototype for the much larger one to be placed in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. The above photo shows the front of the sculpture of this tomb. Its sharp eyes seem to show Loncoln's unbendable will of going through Civil War. Click on the photo to enlarge it.

This photo shows the left side of the Lincoln's sculpture. In this photo Linocoln's eyes look even sharper, don't they? Click on the photo to enlarge it

This photo shows the right side of the Lincoln sculpture. Very interestingly, Lincoln's eyes look somewhat milder in this photo. The sculptor may have wanted to suggest Lincoln's dual character by that, both wild and mild. Click on the photo for enlargement.

This is the back view of the same Lincoln sculpture. It is an American national flag that is draped over the back of the chair. Here you can clearly see the design of the walls of this chamber. They are lined with Ste. Genevieve golden vein (which is a kind of marble). The pilsters made of French black marble are placed at an equal distance between the golden vein panels. Ste. Genevieve is an old French river town down the south of St. Louis. It is a very beautiful small town by the Mississippi River. The history of the town will soon be told in the 2012 travelogue of this site, together with several wonderful photos.

After you leave the rotunda and head to the burial room through the corridors, you feel the cool crisp air in the dark. Actually, it is so dark that you have to select some high ISO when you take photos. And, even with a high ISO, you still have to be extra careful to hold your camera tightly because the shutter speed should be set at 1/15 or even less.

There are a few smaller scuptures of Lincoln in the corridors, each of which shows some colorful careers of him until he finally became the president of the United States. I tried to take some photos of them. But most of those pictures were out of focus because of too much darkness. Too sad. The picture above was the only one that was taken in focus. This sculpture probably depicts the Lincoln who was working as a lawyer in the court.

After walking through dark corridors you finally get to the burial room. There is a cenotaph made of marble, which roughly shows a spot at which the body of Lincoln is buried. I wrote "roughly shows the spot" because the exact burial place is about 30 inches behind the cenotaph and is 10 feet below the floor. Seven State flags surround the cenotaph. These flags shows State after State that the Lincoln family migrated to after they first landed in the New World. Those States are: Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Verginia, Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois. The inscription on the front side of the cenotaph reads: "Abraham Lincoln, 1809 - 1865."

Day Five continues to the next page.

五日目はさらに次のページへと続きます。