A BURIAL-PLACE. 



133 



etics." There was but one grave, and the stone bore 

 the inscription 



Teodoro Ashadl, 

 de la Religione Reformada. 

 July 19 de 1837. 



At the end of this passage was a deadhouse, in which 

 lay, on separate beds, the bodies of two men, both poor, 

 one entirely naked, with his legs drawn up, as though 

 no friend had been by to straighten them, and the other 

 wrapped in matting. On the right of the passage a door 

 opened into a square enclosure, in which were vaults 

 built above the ground, bearing the names of the weal- 

 thy inhabitants of the city. On the left a door opened 

 into an enclosure running in the rear of the deadhouse, 

 about seven hundred and fifty feet long, and three hun- 

 dred wide. The walls were high and thick, and the 

 graves were square recesses lengthwise in the wall, 

 three tiers deep, each closed up with a flat stone, on 

 which the name of the occupant was inscribed. These, 

 too, were for the rich. The area was filled with the 

 graves of the common people, and in one place was a 

 square of new-made earth, under which lay the bodies 

 of about four hundred men killed in the attack upon the 

 city. The table of land commanded a view of the green 

 plain of Guatimala and the volcanoes of the Antigua. 

 Beautiful flowers were blooming over the graves, and a 

 voice seemed to say, 



" Oh do not pluck these flowers, 

 They're sacred to the dead." 



A bier approached with the body of a woman, which 

 was buried without any coffin. Near by was a line of 

 new-made graves waiting for tenants. They were dug 

 through skeletons, and sculls and bones lay in heaps be- 

 side them. I rolled three sculls together with my foot. 



12 



