Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1850-1854, 1854-01-13
Rumored Declaration of War against Rms.
Burying the Dead in Naples.

n. p. Willis in an account of his visit to
Italy, speaks thus Of the burial vaults in Ma
pies:
An old man opened the iron door, and We
entered a clean, spacious, and well paved area,
with long rows Of iron rings in the heavy slabs
ofthe pavement. Without asking question,
the old man walked across to the farther cor
ner, where stood movable lever, and fast
ening the chain into the fixture, raised
massive stone cover of a pit. He requested
ms to stand back for few minutes to give the
effluvia time to escape, and then sheltering
our eyes with our hats we looked in. You
have read, of course, that there are three hun
dred and sixty five pits in this place one of
which is opened every day for the dead of the
city. They are thrown in without shroud or
coffin, and the pit is sealed up at night for
year. They are thirty or forty feet deep, and
each would contain, perhaps, two hundred
bodies Lime is thrown upon the daily heap,
and it soon melts into mass Of garbage, and
by the end of the year the bottom of the pit
is covered with dry white bones.
1t was sometime before we could distin-
guish anything in the darkness of the abyss.
Fixing my eyes on one spot however, the out
lines of a body became defined gradually, and
in few minutes, sheltering my eyes COM
pletely from the sun above, | could see all the
horrors of the scene but too distinctly. Eight
corpses, all grown persons, lay in a confused
heap together, as they had been thrown in
one after another in the course of the day.
The last was powerfully made gray old man,
who had fallen flat on his back, with his right
hand lying across, and half covering the face
Of woman. BY his full limbs and chest,
and the darker color of his legs below the
knee, he was probably one of the lazzaroni
and had met with a sudden death.
His right heel lay on the forehead of a
young man, emaciated to the last degree, his
chest thrown up as he lay and his ribs show
ing like a skeleton covered with skin. The
close black hair of the latter, as his head rest
ed on another body, were in such strong re-
lief that | counted them. Off to the right,
quite distinct from the heap, lay in beauti-
ful attitude, girl, as far as / could Judge, of
not more than nineteen or twenty. Her hair
was very long, and covered her left shoulder
and bosom; her arm was across her body,
and if her mother had laid her down to sleep
she could not have disposed her limbs more
decently. The head had fallen little to the
right, and the feet which were small, even
for a lady, were pressed one against the other
as if she were about turning on her side. The
sexton said that Young man had come with
the body and was very i'll for some time after
it was thrown in. We asked him if respec-
table people were brought here. " Yes" he
said, "many. None but the rich would 90
to the expense of a separate grave for their
relations. People were often brought in hand
some grave clothes, but they were always
stripped before they were left. The STROUD
whenever there was one, was the perquisite
of the undertakers." And thus are flung,
like beasts, into this noisome pit, the greater
part of the population of this vast city--the
young and the old, the vicious and the yirtu-
Gus together, without the decency even of
rag, to keep up the distinction Of life! Can
human beings be thus thrown awayl Men
like ourselyes-women, children like our sis
tiers and brothersl | never was so humilis-
ted in my life as by this horrible spectacle.
| did not think man-felon even, or leper
or what you will, that is guilty or debased
Il did not think anything that had been
human, could be SO recklessly abandoned.-
Pah 1t makes one sick at heart God
grant may never die at Naples,