Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1853-08-31
From the Ne,c Orleans Crescent, dug. IL.
Down Among the Dead Men,.

From the Ne,o Orleans Crescent, dug. II.
Down Among ths Dead Men,.
To verify the many horrible reports of the do
ings among the dead, we the other day visited the
cemeteries. In every street were long process
sions. In the countenances of plodding passengers
were the lines of anxiety and grief, and many q
door was festooned with black and white hang
ings, the voiceless witnesses of wailng and ofsor-
row. On the one hand slowly swept the long cor.
teges of the wealthy, nodding with plumes, and
drawn by prancing horses, rejoicing in their fu-
neral vanities; another, the hearse of the citl
zen-sodier, preceded by measured music, envel-
oped in warlike panoply, and followed by the mol
sy tread OF men under arms while there again
the pauper was trundled to his long home on a
rlckety.sept, with boy for driver, and who
whlstled as he went, and swore careless oath as
he urged his mule or spawned horse to trot, ma
king haste with another morsel contributed to the
graad. banquet of dealh. Now among the steeples
was heard the Ginning of the bells, as of Ghoules
up there, mingling their hoarse voices as in cho-
rus of graduation the ranks of fallen mortali-
ty. Anon, from some lowly tenement thrilled the
low wall Of mother for the child other affections.
while from the corner opposite burst the song OF
some low bacchanal, mingling ribaldry with SEN
tlment, or swearing payer or two as the humor
moved him.
The skies wore a delusive aspect. Above was
all cloudless sunshine, but little in keeping with
the black melancholy that enyeloped all below
Out along the highways that lead to the cities of
the dead, and still the tramp of funeral crowds
knew no cessation. Up rolled the volumes OF dust
from the busy roads, and the plumes of the death
carriages in seeming sympathy to the sway
ing expresses of the swamp, enveloped in their
dun appareling of weeping moss-ft garniture for
such scene.
At the gathering points carriages accumulated,
and vulgar teamsters, as they jostled each other
in the press mingled the coarse jest with the ri
bald oath no sound but of profane malediction and
of rotous mrth, the clang of whip thongs and the
rattle of wheels At the gates, the winds brought
intimation of the corruption working within. Not
a puff but was laden with the rank atmosphere
from rotting corpses. Inside they were piled by
fifties, exposed to the heat of the sun, swollen
with corruption, bursting their coffin lids, and sun
derlng, as if by physical effort the ligaments that
bound their hands and feet, and extending their
rigid limbs in every outre attitude. What feast
OF horrors? Mammon at the gates was making
thrift outside by the hands of his black and sweat
ing minions, that rendered sweatmeats and cool
ing beverages to the throngs ofmouners or of idle
spectators, who, inhaling the fumes of rotting bo-
dies, already "heaved the GORGE" while within,
the "King of Terrors" held his Satunalia, with
a crowd of stolid laborers, who, as they tumbled
the dead into the bitches, knocked them ''about
the mazzard," and swore dread oaths. intermn-
gled with the more dreadful sounds of demoniac
jollity.
Long bitches were dug across the great human
charnel. Wide enough were they to entomb
legion, but only fourteen inches deep. Collins
laid in them showed their tops above the surface
of the earth. On these was piled dirt to the depth
OF foot or more, but so loosely that the myrads
OF flies found entry between the loose clods, down
to the cracked seams of the cofins and buzzed and
blew there their ovaria, creating each hour their
new hatched swarms.
But no sound was there of sorrow within that
wide Gehenna Men used to the scent of disso-
luton had forgotten all touch of sympathy. Un-
couth laborers, with their bare shock heads stood
under the broiling heat of the sun, digging in the
earth; and as anon they would encounter an OBJ
structlng root or stump, would swear hideous
oath, remove to another spot, and 60 on digging
as before. Now and then the mattock or the spade
would disturb the bones of some former tenant of
the mould, forgotten there amid the armies of the
accumulated victims, and the sturdy laborer with
gibe, would hurl the broken fragments on the
sward, gfow forth an energetic d-n, and chuck
lie in his excess of glee. Skull bones were dug
up from their long sepulture, with ghastness star
ing out
"From each lacklustre, eyeless hole"
without elicting an "Alas, poor Yorick, and with
nn1 frnp, tbo nfe
your betters!"
Economy of space was the source of cunning
calculation III bestowing away the dead men,
Side by side were laid two.of gigantic proportions,
bloated by corruption to the size of Titans. The
central projections of their collins, left spaces be-
tween them at their heads and heels. This was
too much room to be filled with earth. How
should the space be saved2 Opportunely the ma
terial is at hand, for a cart comes numbering in,
with the corpse of a mother and her two little
children. Chuck the children in the spaces at the
heads and heels of the Titans, and lay the mother
by herself, out there alone A comrade for her
will be found anon, and herself and babes will
sleep not the less soundly from the unwonted con-
tact!
The fumes rise up in deathly exhalations from
the accumulating hecatombs of fast coming corps
es. Men wear at their noses bags of camphor and
odorous spices-for there are crowds there who
have no business but to look on and contemplate
the vast congregation of the dead. They don't
care if they die themselves they have become so
used to the reek of corruption. They even laugh
at the riOtings Of the skeleton DEATH and crack
jokes in the horrid atmosphere where scarcely they
can draw breath for utterance.
The stoical negroes too, who were hired at five
dollars per hour to assist in the work OF interment,
stagger Under the sitting fumes. and can only be
kept at their work by deep and continued pota
tions of the "fre water" They gulph deep
draughts Of the stimulating fluid, and reeling to
their tasks hold their noses with one hand while
with the other they grasp the spade, heave on the
mound and rush back to The bottle TO ph again.
1t is a jolly time with these ebon laborers. and
with their white co-workers. as thouehtless and
as jolly and full as much intoxicated as themselves
And thus, what with the songs and obscene jests
of the grave diggers the buzzing of the flies, the
sing-song cries of the huckster women vending
their confectlons, the hoarse oaths of the men who
drive the dead carts, the merry whistle of boys,
and the sitting reek from scores ofbackened corps
es, the day wears apace, the work of sepulture is
done, and night draws the curtain.
IDEAS AND MANNERS OF THE AGE OF QUEEN
MARY.-We give only one or two instances of the
manners and ideas of the age in which Queen Ma
ry's lot was cast. 1t is generally known that
Henry VIII put seventy two thousand persons of
all religious persuasons on the scaffold during his
single reign but it is not equally known that his
daughter Elizabeth had an array of three hundred
heads of persons convicted of high treason placed
on London Bridge, including those of her cousin
and friend Norfolk, and her romantic lover Essex;
and that, so far from being shocked at the ghastly
array, she took the foreign Ambassadors to see it,
in order to show how we serve traitors in Eng
land.'