ANOTHER FUNERAL. 



371 



premier pas qui coute, they tasted better than the fish, 

 and they were the best food possible for our canoe voy- 

 age, being dried and capable of preservation. 



Go where we will, to the uttermost parts of the earth, 

 we are sure to meet one acquaintance. Death is al- 

 ways with us. In the afternoon was the funeral of 

 a child. The procession consisted of eight or ten 

 grown persons, and as many boys and girls. The sex- 

 ton carried the child in his arms, dressed in white, with 

 a wreath of flowers around its head. All were hud- 

 dled around the sexton, walking together ; the father 

 and mother with him ; and even more than in Costa 

 Rica I remarked, not only an absence of solemnity, but 

 cheerfulness and actual gayety, from the same happy 

 conviction that the child had gone to a better world. I 

 happened to be in the church as they approached, more 

 like a wedding than a burial party. The floor of the 

 church was earthen, and the grave was dug inside, 

 because, as the sexton told me, the father was rich 

 and could afford to pay for it, and the father seemed 

 pleased and proud that he could give his child such a 

 burial-place. The sexton laid the child in the grave, 

 folded its little hands across its breast, placing there a 

 small rude cross, covered it over with eight or ten inch- 

 es of earth, and then got into the grave and stamped it 

 down with his feet. He then got out and threw in 

 more, and, going outside of the church, brought back a 

 pounder, being a log of wood about four feet long and 

 ten inches in diameter, like the rammer used among 

 us by paviors, and again taking his place in the grave, 

 threw up the pounder to the full swing of his arm, and 

 brought it down with all his strength over the head of 

 the child. My blood ran cold. As he threw it up a 

 second time I caught his arm and remonstrated with 



