The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-06-27

close to the hand! They returned the
 purifying corpse to Mother Earth with
 all possible speed, but for three success
 sive mornings thereafter she was found
 disinterred, having been resurrected
 again and again by other robbers, who
 were not aware that the bit Of gold had
 already been appropriated.
 At the far end of the enclosure is that
 portion set aside for the burial of for
 eigners. commonly known as the Eng
 fish corner" There was great difficulty
 in securing this concession to the alien element, and to this day the spot is looked upon by the natives with re- proach and contempt, as if the nearness
 of bones that may possibly have held heretic souls were an insult to those
 who ''died in the Lord"
 Near the cemetery gates is a neat lit- tie chapel, and kind Of receiving vault in which corpses are placed to afait their turn for interment, when several funerals happen to arrive at once.
 Midway between the chapel and the strangeers' corner, exactly in the cen
 ter of the enclosure, is tall, circular edifice of plastered adobe, which looks from a distance like the marble wall of Greek temple. A nearer view of this
 "whited sepulcre" discloses an accumu- lation of horrors sufficient to shake the
 strongest nerves. Fifteen feet of tenn pie above eight feet of cellar makes a circular vault twenty-three feet deep; and at the time of our visit this was nearly half filled with uncoff1ned corps iY, oil nf Iaaox, +, a1
 been evicted from rented graves and pitched into it. to await the semi-annu- al cremation. There are great port 1 holes in the walls, and a. broad stair way leads down into the ellar. 1 Through these open spaces passer-by
 may have an unrestricted view of bones, shrouds, skulls, dismembered limbs and headless trunks, in such an
 awful tumble as, it is to be hoped,
 would be difficult to find anywhere else
 on earth. Some of the skeletons show 1 considerable flesh yet clinging to them,
 and there are long braids of hair and | glossy tresses that doubtless loving 1 hands caressed not long ago. The
 wonder grows that the air is not so poi | soned by decomposition as to kill the l inhabitants of all the surrounding sec l tion; but, though rendered sick to faint
 ness by the fearful sight, truth compels
 me 10 admit that but little odor comes
 from the charnel house. This is partly
 due to the lime that has been freely
 used, and also, no doubt, to the absence
 of the blue-bottle fly, and the fact that
 putrefaction is almost impossible in this
 pure mountain atmosphere where car-
 casses of man or beast, though left un- covered in the sun, dry up and num-
 nifty rather than decompose. To the | left of this dreadful temple is large open space devoted to the poorest peo- | ple-hospital cases, and those who can-
 not pay even three months rent for a
 grave. The middle class-that vast
 majority between the large pauper el- ement and the comparatively few aris-
 tocrats-rent graves for a year, with the privilege of renewing the lease if so disposed. Those in more affluent cir cumstances usually begin with three | years; and those able to stretch the
 point beyond that period of time gene- rally prefer niche in the wall, which affords greater security and may be re-
 tained as long as money and the re-
 membrance of relatives hold out The day of our visit must have been a good one for funerals; for during the hour we spent in the cemetery no fewer than
 five of them came and went. The first coffin was a plain, unpainted box car- ried on the shoulders of half dozen men; and we observed that this neces- sitated the services of only one priest. | who made short work of the dismal mass. Close on the heels of the bear CTS there followed in quick sessession three interments of the commonest sort, the bodies having been brought | uncoffined from the city, to be hurried 1 into the ground as quickly as possible. The portion where these poor are bur-
 jed is a Golgotha that baff1es descrip- i ton. Its entire surface is strewn with
 bones, parts of broken collins, shreds of
 grave-clothes, braids of hair, cts,
 which have been turned up by the spades of grave -diggers, or dropped by those who bear evicted corpses to the
 charnel house. As many as a dozen new-nade graves were yawning for their coming occupants, and in the pile of earth thrown up beside each one were skulls and limbs and bones galare.
 On top of one heap noticed human trunk, headless and limbless, and on another an adult leg with withered
 flesh clinging to it, from which the foot
 had been partially cut by the spade,
 Directly in the path lay something so
 ghastly that the gentlemen of our party
 quickly stepped between it and us. but too late to save our eyes from a never to-be-forgotten sight-that of wo- mans head cut off at the neck, with
 long hair streaming all around it. and the white cotton bandage that had bound up the poor jaws still in it's place, hardly soiled by contact with the earth.
 FANNIE B. WARD.