GRAVE OF A COUNTRYMAN. 



367 



flowers. It was a bier carrying the body of a child to 

 the cemetery. We folloAved, and passing it at the gate, 

 entered through a chapel, at the door of which sat three 

 or four men selling lottery-tickets, one of whom asked 

 us if we wished to see the grave of our countryman. 

 We assented, and he conducted us to the grave of a 

 young American whom I had known by sight, and sev- 

 eral members of whose family I knew personally. He 

 died about a year before my visit, and his funeral was 

 attended with mournful circumstances. The vicar re- 

 fused him burial in consecrated ground. Dr. Brayley, 

 who was the only European resident in Cartago, and at 

 whose house he died, rode over to San Jose, and ma- 

 king a strong point of the treaty existing between the 

 United States and Central America, obtained an order 

 from the government for his burial in the cemetery. 

 Still the fanatic vicar, acting, as he said, under a higher 

 power, refused. A messenger was sent to San Jose, 

 and two companies of soldiers were ordered to the doc- 

 tor's house to escort the body to the grave. At night 

 men were stationed at its side to watch that it was not 

 dug up and thrown out. The next day the vicar, with 

 the cross and images of saints, and all the emblems of 

 the church, and a large concourse of citizens, moved in 

 solemn procession to the cemetery, and formally recon- 

 secrated the ground which had been polluted by the 

 burial of a heretic. The grave is the third from the 

 corridor. 



In the corridor, and in an honoured place among the 

 principal dead of Cartago, lay the body of another 

 stranger, an Englishman named Bailey. The day be- 

 fore his death the alcalde was called in to draw his will, 

 who, according to the customary form, asked him if he 

 was a Christian. Mr. Bailey answered yes ; and the 



