Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1885-09-24
Gales aud, Sketehes.
The Cap,chis Cemetery At Palermo.

dow to look at the variety OF Slctllan views
exposed for sale, and your eye is almost
certain to fall upon one very queer photo
graph representing vault full of dead
full of grimacing skeletons in fantastic
attire. Underneath you read, Cemetery
of the Capuchins."
What is it? If you put that question to
any citizen of Palermo, he will reply with
disgust Don't 90 to look at that horror!
1t is a hideous. barbarous thing. which
will soon disappear, thank goodness! Be-
sides. they stopped buryiug people there
two years ago"
And it is very difficult to obtain any in
formation of more precise or compre-
hensive sort.-such is the horror that most
Sicilians seem to have of these extraordn-
ary catacombs.
Finally, however, | managed to learn
this much: The soil upon which the Capu-
chin monastery is built, possesses to such
degree the singular property of hasten
ing the decomposition of a corpse, that in
one year nothing remains upon the bones
except few patches of black withered
skin, and perhaps some of the hair of the
beard and cheeks.
The collins are placed in small lateral
vaults, each of which contains about eight
or ten dead; and after a year passes the
coffin is opened and the corpse taken out
"a frightful mummy "a bearded, con-
vulsive-looking mummy.-tbat seems TO
strive to shrek, that seems to be agonized
by horrible tortures; and this mummy is
then suspended in one of the main CALLER
les, where members of the family come to
visit it from time to time. Those who
wish to be preserved by this drying pro-
cess, make their wills accordingly and
they will be accordingly filed away under
those black vaults (like curiosities in a
museum SO long as their relatives pay "a
certain annual stipend, When this is no
| longer paid, the remains are taken away
and buried in the ordinary manner.
| resolved to visit this CHASTITY collec-
/ ton of corpses.
At the gate of an humble looking con-
vent an old CaPuchin friar in his brown
habit, receives me; and proceeds to show
me the way without saying a word-know-
ing by experience what strangers want to
see in this place.
We pass through poor chapel, and
slowly descend broad stairway of stone.
And all at once | see before us an i'm
mense gallery. broad and lofty, to whose
walls are suspended a whole nation of
skeletons clad in the most oddly grotesque
costumes. Some hang in air side by side /:
others are lying upon five great shelves of
stone, rising one above the other from the
soil to the ceiling. A line of dead stands
erect upon the ground-a long compact
rank, whose frighttul heads seem to speak
Some heads are gnawed by hideous vege-
tations, which deform even still more the
jaws and the bones of the face some
still preserve their hair; others fragments
of moustache; Others long bit of beard.
These stare upward with their empty
eyes; those look downward there are
some who seem to laugh an atrocious
laugh here again are others that appear
to writhe in agony but all seem terrified
as by some supernatural fear.
| And they are all dressed, those dead
these wretched, hdeous and ridiculous
dead all dressed by their relatives. who
have them out of their coffins in order to
make them take part in this awful assem-
bly,.
Almost all are clad in sort of long
black robe, with cowl which is generally
drawn over the head. But there are others
whose friends desired to attire more
sumptuously and the miserable skeleton,
wearing an embroidered Greek cap, and
enveloped in a rich mans dressing gown,
seems, as it lies upon its back. to sleep a
nightmarish sIeep,-a sleep at once ludi-
crous and terrific.
A placard like blind mans begging
card, bearing the name and the date of
death. is hung to the neck of each corpse
I date ,,,i- a Oh.
through the very marrow of ones bones.
You read. 1SS0-lSS1-1SS2. Here is a
man,-at least here is what was man.
three years ago. only three years ago ?
This thing used to live 1T laughed.
talked, ate, drank. was full of Joy and
| hope. And now behold it. Before this
double rank of innumerable dead, collins
and baskets are heaped up.-luxurious
collins of black wood. with brazen orna-
ments, and glass windows to enable one
to look inside them. You might almost
mistake them for trunks, for weird bag
gage of some sort bought in some strange
bazaar hideous bazaar attended by
all who must depart upon the Great Jour
ney,-as the writer's of other DAYS used to
say.
But other galleries opening to right
and left prolong indefinitely this immense
subterranean cemetary.
| Here are the women.-even more bur-
| lesque than the men, for they have been
coquettishlv attired and bedecked Their
heads stare at you from within bonnets
decorated with ribbons and lace, making
a snowwhite fringe around each black
face, all purified, all gnawed by the
strange chemistry of the earth Their
hands protrude. like the severed roots of
trees. from the sleeves of dresses; and
the stockings that contain the bones of the
legs look empty. Sometimes the dead
wears only a pair of shoes.-large. too
large for the poor dried up feet.
Here are the young girls-the hideous
young girls in their robes of white. each
bearing about her brow a wreath of metal
/ symbolizing innocence. They might be
taken tor old women,-very, verv old
women, so horrible are their grimaces
/ Their ages are l6. 49, 30 years How hor-
rihle
/ But row we enter a gallery full of little
/ glass collins this is the chldren's burial.
chamber The bones of the little crea-
lures. still soft, could not resist the work
of decomposition. And you cannot tell
exactly what you are looking at.-the