360 



INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 



bellish his intended work on Palenque. Her career, as 

 often happens with beauty in higher life, was short, brill- 

 iant, and unhappy. She had married a young Indian, 

 who abandoned her and went to another village. Ig- 

 norant, innocent, and unconscious of wrong, she was 

 persuaded to marry another, drooped, and died. The 

 funeral procession passed our door. The corpse was 

 borne on a rude bier, without coffin, in a white cotton 

 dress, with a shawl over the head, and followed by a 

 slender procession of women and children only. I 

 walked beside it, and heard one of them say, " bueno 

 Christiano, to attend the funeral of a poor woman." 

 The bier was set down beside the grave, and in lifting 

 the body from it the head turned on one side, and the 

 hands dropped ; the grave was too short, and as the 

 dead was laid within the legs were drawn up. Her 

 face was thin and wasted, but the mouth had a sweet- 

 ness of expression which seemed to express that she 

 had died with a smile of forgiveness for him who had 

 injured her. I could not turn my eyes from her placid 

 but grief-worn countenance, and so touching was its 

 expression that I could almost have shed tears. Young, 

 beautiful, simple, and innocent, abandoned and dead, 

 with not a mourner at her grave. All seemed to think 

 that she was better dead ; she was poor, and could not 

 maintain herself. The men went away, and the women 

 and children with their hands scraped the earth upon 

 the body. It was covered up gradually and slowly ; 

 the feet stuck out, and then all was buried but the face. 

 A small piece of muddy earth fell upon one of the eyes, 

 and another on her sweetly smiling mouth, changing 

 the whole expression in a moment ; death was now 

 robed with terror. The women stopped to comment 

 upon the change ; the dirt fell so as to cover the whole 



