Southern sentinel. [volume] (Plaquemine, Parish of Iberville [La.]) 1848-1858, 1853-08-20
From the N. 0. Crescent
Down among the Dead Men,

l
professions tramping TO the solemn music ,
funeral marches. In the countenances of plo,
ding passengers were the lines of anxiety ar
grief, and many door was festooned wit
black and white hangngs, the voiceless witne:
ses of waiing and of sorrow. On the one han
slowly swept the long corteges uf the wealth
nodding with plumes and drawn by prancin
horses, rejoicing in their funeral vanites; on al
other, the hearse of the citizen soldier. prece
ded by measured music, enveloped in warIjk
panopIy, and followed by the noisy tread q
men under arms; while there again the paupe
was trundled to his long home on 'rickett
cart, with boy for driver, who whistled a
he went, and sWore careless oath as he urge
his mule or spawned horse to a trot, makins
haste with another morsel contributed to tn
grand banquet of death. Now among tn
steeples was heard the Ginning of the BELLS a.
of Ghoules up there, mingling their hoars,
voices as in chorus of graduation over tht
ranks of fallen mortality. Anon from some
| low y tenement trilled the low wall of mother
for the child of her affections, while from the
conner opposite burst the song of some low
bacchanal, mingling ribaldry with sentiment
or swearing aprayer or two as the humor NOV,
ed him.
The skies wore deusve aspect Above
was all cloudless sunshine, but little in keeping
with the black melancholy that enveloped ali
below. Out along the highways that lead to
the cities of the dead, and still the tramp of fu.
neral crowds knew no cessation.
At the gathering points carriages accumula-
ted, and vulgar teamsters, as they jostled each
other in the press, mingled the coarse jest with
the ribbald oath; no sound but of profane
malediction and of riotous mirth, the clang of
whip thongs and the rattle of wheels. At the
gates, the winds brought intimation of the cor
ruption working within. Not puff but was
laden with the rank atmosphere from rotting
corpses. Inside they were piled by fifties, ex-
posed to the heat of the sun, swollen with cor.
ruption, bursting their coffin lids, and sundering
as if by physical effort, the ligaments that
bound their hands and feet, and extending their
rigid limbs in every 0utre attitude. What
feast of horrors! Inside, corpses piled in pyra-
mids, and without the gates, old and withered
crones and fat huxter women, fretting in their
own grease, dispensing ice creams and confec-
tlons, and brushing away, with brooms made of
brushes, the green bottle-hies that hovered on
their merchandise, and that anon buzzed away
to drink dainty inhalations from the green and
fostering corpses. Mammon at the gates was
making thrift outside by the hands of his black
and sweating minions, that rendered sweet
meats and cooling beverages to the throngs of
or of idle spectators, who, inhaling
the fumes Of rotting bodies, already "heaved
the gorge;" while within, the "Kng of Terrors"
held his Saturnala, with a crowd Of stolid la
borers, who, as they tumbled the dead into
bitches, knocked them 'about the mazzard,"
and swore dread oaths, intermingled with the
more dreadful sounds of demoniac jollity.
Long bitches were dug across the great hu.
nan charnel. Wide enough were they to en-
omb legion, but only fourteen inches deep.
Cofhns laid in them showed their tops above the
surface of the earth. On these was piled dirt
o the depth of foot or more but so loosely,
hat the myriads of flies found entry between
he loose clods, down to the cracked seams of
'uaria, creating each hour their new hatched
warns.
But no sound was there of sorrow within
hat wide Gehenna. Men used to the scent of
dissolution had forgotten all touch ofsympathy
Jncouth laborers, with their bare shock heads, |
TODD under the broiling heat of the sun, Dig
ing in the earth; and as anon they would en-
ounter an obstructing root or stump, would |
wear hideous oath, remove to another spot, |
nd go on digging as before. Now and then |
he mattock Or the spade would desturb the |
zones OF some former tenent of the mould, for |
often there amid the armies of the accumula-
ed victims, and the sturdy laborer with gibe,
you'd hurl the broken fragments on the sward,
roWl forth an energetic d-n, and chuckle in
is excess of glee. Skull bones were dug up
rom their long sepulcure, with ghastliness
taring out
"From each lack-lustre, eyeless hole"
'ithout eliciting an "Alas, poor Yorick," and
nth only an exclamation from the digger, Of
room for your betters!"
Economy of space was the source of Gun.
ing calculation in bestowing away the dead
len. Side by side were laid two of gigantic
bloated by corruption to the size
Titans. The central projections of their
'ftins, left spaces between them at their heads
nd heels. This was too much room to be
lied with earth. How should the space be
'veds Opportunely the material is at hand,
n a cart comes numbering in, with the corpses
"a mother and her two little children. Chuck
e children in the spaces at the heads and heels
the Titans, and lay the mother by herself,
1T there alone! A comrade for her will lie
und anon, and herself and babes will sleep
ot the less soundly from the unwonted con-
ct!
The fumes rise up in deathly exhalations
ON the accumulating hecatombs of fast COM
G corpses. Men wear at their noses bags of
mphor and odorous spices--for there are
owds there who have no business but to look
! and contemplate the vast congregation
the dead. They don't care if they die them
lves-they have become so used to the reek
corruptian. They even laugh at the riotings
the skeleton Death, and crack jokes in the
'rrid atmosphere where scarcely they can draw
cath for utteranee.
The stoical negroes, too, who are hired at
e dollars per hour to assist in the work of
Lerment, stagger under sitting fumes, and
n only be kept at their work by deep and con-
lued potations Of the fire wafer" They gulp
ep draughts Of the stimulating fluid, and
cling to their tasks hold their noses with one !