New Orleans daily crescent. [volume] ([New Orleans, La.]) 1851-1866, 1853-08-11

say this much, that those who are unacquainted
with the matter may not unjustly attribute
blame to the Postofice Department in our city
The evil should be remedied at once, and every
contractor and party connected with these fire.
quent mishaps be held to strict accountability.
rs J. 49, ---
DOWN .a.M0.NG THE DEAD MEN
To verify the many horrible reports of the
doings among the dead, we the other day Wis
tied the cemeteries. In every street were long
professions, tramping to the solemn music of
funeral marches. In the countenauces of
plodding passengers were the lines of anxiety
and grief, and many door was festooned with
black and white hangings, the voiceless wit
nesses of wailing and of sorrow. On the one
hand slowly swept the long corteges of the
wealthy, nodding with plumes and drawn by
prancing horses, rejoicing in their funeral van
tiles; on another, the hearse of the citizen
soldier, preceded by measured music, enveloped
in warlike panoply, and followed by the noisy
tread of men under arms; while there again
the pauper was trundled to his long home on a
ricketty cart, with boy for driver, who
whistled as he went, and swore careless oath
as he urged his mule or spawned horse to
trot, making haste with another morsel con-
tributed to the grand banquet of death. Now
among the steeples was heard the Ginning of
the bells, as of Ghoules up there, mingling their
hoarse voices as in chorus of graduation over
the ranks of fallen mortality. Anon from some
lowly tenement trilled the low wall of a mother
for the child of her affections, while from the
corner opposite burst the song of some low
bacohanal, mingling ribaldry with sentiment
or swearing a prayer 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 enveloped 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 vol
umes of dust from the busy roads, and the
plumes of the death carriages nodded in seem
ing sympathy to the swaying expresses of the
swamp, enyeloped in their dun appareling of
weeping moss-ft garniture for such a scene
AT the gathering points carriages aocumu-
lated, and vulgar teamsters, as they jostled
each other in the press, mingled the coarse Jest
with the ribbald oath no sound but of profane
whip thongs and the rattle of wheels AT the
gates, the winds brought intmation of the cor
ruption working within. Not puff but was
laden with the rank atmosphere from rotting
corpses. Inside they were piled by ffties, ex-
posed to the heat of the sun, swollen with cor
ruption, bursting their coffin lids, and sundering.
as if by physical effort, the igaments that
bound their hands and feet, and extending their
rigid limbs in every 0utre attitude What A
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-
tons, and brushing away, with brooms made of
bushes, the green bottle-fies that lowered 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 MOURN
ers or Of idle spectators, who, inhaling the
fumes of rotting bodies, already g heaved the
gorge while within, the King of Terrors =
held his Saturnalia, with a crowd of stohd
laborers, 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 iollity.
Long bitches were dug across the great hui
man charnel. Wide enough were they to entomb
legion, but only fourteen inches deep. COT
Inns laid in them showed their tops above the
surface of the earth. On these was piled dirt
to the depth of a foot or more, but So loosely.
that the myriads of flies found entry between
the loose clods, down to the cracked seams of Tho
collins, and buzzed and blew there their oroyjo
creating each hour their new hatchel swortns
But no sounu was there of sorrow within that
wlde uehenha Men used TO the scent Of disgo-
luton had forgotten all touch Of symnatIv
uncoath laborers, with their bare shock heads
stood under the broiling heat of the sun. do
ging in the earth and as anon they would cn-
counter an obstrueting root or stump would
swear hideous oath, remove to another spot /
ana go on digging as before Now and then the |
ma''ock or the spade would disturb the bones of
some former tenant of the mould. forgotten there
anna the armies Of the accumulated victims
and the sturdy laborer with yihe rvorld1,,,I
the broken fragments on the s,ya,d 80, 80,
an energetic d-n, and chuckle in Nc go, g
gree. osuii bones We're dug up from their lopp
sepulture. with ghastlness staring ont s
" From each lack-lustre, eyeless hole,
without eliciting an Alas, poor Yorick.e ora
with only an exclamation from the digger ~
/" room for your betters!''
Economy of space was the source of CUNNING
calculation in bestowing away the dead men.
Side by side were laid two, of gigantic propor
tions, bloated by corruption to the size of Ttans
The central projections of their collins, LETT
spaces between them at their heads and heels
This was too much room to be filled with earth.
How should the space be saved opportuncly
the material is at hand, for a cart comes luu-