Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-06-07

arm are thrown almost caressingly, and legs
and arms. ribs and thighs, whole and in
bits, were piled up, one on top of another,
like so many stones, and the whole, ghastly
as it was, looked more like piled up Indian
corn in a crib than anything else.
The most ghastly things, however, in this
great vault were the mummies, who stood
leaning against the wall guarding, as it
were, the remains of the thousands Of broken
skeletons beyond them. There were at
least 100 of these mummies, each of which
was more horrible than anything you will
see In the Museum of Boulak, near Cairo, in
Egypt, or any of the horrid examples of
South American and Alaskan mummies,
which you will find in our National Mu-
scum in Washington. The air here is so
dry that 1t sucks the juices out of the dead,
and these mummies have been made not by
spices and by linen bands, but by the at
mosphere. They are more horrible and
lifelike than the artifcially preserved arti.
Gle, and they retain the features and
The Expressions of the Dead,
shrivelled, it is true, but all the more horri-
BILE in theis thousands of wrinkles. Here
against thu wall is propped the mummy of
bearded man. His face Is perfect and the
whiskers, fadedinto ableaehsd dust color of
hundreds of years, cover the whole of the
lower part of his face. His clothes have
long since rotted off of him, and his bare
chest, slightly sunken, looks like the
parchment of an old drum. 1 tap it with
my pencil to test his lungs, and it gives
forth hollow drum-like sound of remon-
STRANGE. His thrivelled arms are crossed
and his withsred brown legs are. straight.
As my eye travels down them, I see that a
part Of an old boot still olings to one of his
feet, and that the other, like all the rest of
his clothing, has rotted of long, long ago.
Next to this CHASTITY object stands a
mummy more ghastly still It is that of g
woman whose white teeth are as well pre-
served in death as in life, and whose black
tongue sticks through these in sort of a
leer. She has q wealth of long black hair
reaching to her waist, and even in death
she shows signs of grace and beauty. Next
her stands another man whose features seem
to be contortsd with agony, and little
further on is the mummy Of boy of IL,
whose mouth Is wide open, and whose
sunlxen frame makes you think of a skeleton
of Smike, the persecuted student of sQuires
at Dotheboys Hall
A Coffin for a Tripod.
I had my camera with me in this vault,
and wished to take a photograph of it.
There was, however, no place on which to
rest the camera, and suggested to the
guard of the cemetery that he 20 and get me
board He at once picked up a coffin from
little pile which contained the mummies
of babies, and taking the mummy out, held
1t under his arm, while he propped the
cefin on end and made 1t stand level By
putting a thigh bone from the great hesp
under one corner. Upon this rested my
camera and succeeded in taking very fair
picture,
Before left, I took picture of this man
with the mummy in his arms, and another
of him and his brother ghoul holding up
the municipal coffin in which all the dead
of this town have to be brought to the grave
yard. There are no hearses in this mountain
city, and the town has fixed rates for the
rent of its cofins. These coffins are SO big
that another coffin can be set inside of them,
and they are carried on the shoulders of the
bearers up the steep hill AS soon as they
enter the cemetery, the cofins are placed on
ledge or stone table and are opened. for
the purpose, it is said, of seeing that not
more than one corpse Is buried in one coffin.
and that the cemetery gets its full fees for
every corpse.
The Styles in Collins.
The roadway up to the cemetery has mapy
casket shops, but the caskets, though eI.
pensiye, are very rudely made and mapy of
those for babies are painted light blue or
grained IN oak. saw at Zacatecas q boy