40 



TOWN OF BUENOS AIEES. 



walked towards the gate. I met the same man, 

 with an assistant, carrying a tray, in which was 

 the body of a very old man, followed by his 

 son, who was about forty ; the party were all quar- 

 relling, and remained disputing for some minutes 

 after they had brought the body to the edge of the 

 trench. This trench was about seven feet broad, - 

 and had been dug from one wall of the burial-' 

 ground to the other : the corpses were buried across 

 it by fours, one above another, and there was a 

 moveable shutter which went perpendicularly across 

 the trench, and was moved a step forwards as soon 

 as the fourth body was interred. One body had 

 already been interred ; the son jumped down upon 

 it, and while he was thus in the grave, standing 

 upon one body and leaning against three, the two 

 grave-diggers gave him his father, who was dressed 

 in a long, coarse, white linen shirt. The grave was 

 so narrow that the man had great difficulty in laying 

 the body in it, but as soon as he had done so, he 

 addressed the lifeless corpse of his father, and 

 embraced it with a great deal of feeling: the 

 situation of the father and son, although so very 

 unusual, seemed at the moment anything but un- 



