62 THREE YEARS IN THE PACIFIC 



awe, well calculated to influence the mind of the uneducated, 

 who readily yield to appearances which they do not compre- 

 hend. 



I visited this church on All Saints' Eve. It was filled with 

 worshippers kneeling on pieces of carpet and mats, counting 

 their beads in silence for the rest of the departed. The silence 

 was interrupted, ever and anon, by the bursting of rockets sent 

 from the church steps and belfry, accompanied by a short peal 

 of bells. I threaded my way through the kneeling crowd, to 

 a side door which leads to the cemetery of the church. It is 

 an open court, surrounded by a corridor, supported by wooden 

 pillars. I descended the short stair to the temple of death, 

 called the Catacumbas ;" by the faint glimmer of the lamps, 

 and the soft light of the starry heaven, I saw a number of slaves 

 busied in decorating the sepulchres of their late masters. Crim- 

 son satin and black velvet canopies, trimmed with broad gold 

 and silver lace and spangles, were tastefully arranged over the 

 vases containing the ashes of the dead. Around the enclosure, 

 forming in fact the walls, are tiers of holes, each one of which 

 is just large enough to contain a human body. The corpse, 

 with its coffin, is deposited in one of these holes, where it 

 remains for two years, and at the expiration of that time is re- 

 moved ; the bones are burned, and the ashes inurned for preser- 

 vation. Some of these urns are very beautiful, being ornament- 

 ed, and bearing the appropriate epitaphs and inscriptions in gilt 

 letters. Funerals are conducted here with as great pomp as 

 the circumstances of the deceased will allow. It is very com- 

 mon to hire coffins for the occasion, and they are always large 

 enough to receive within them a rough box enclosing the 

 corpse. Funerals always take place at night, and the dead 

 body is left in the church till the ensuing day, when the rough 

 coffin is sealed up in the hole, and the gay one is returned to 

 the undertaker, to figure on another occasion. 



The police of Rio is military ; walk where you may, soldiers 

 and barracks are met with. 



The low situation of this city, and the filthy state of its streets, 

 rendered it formerly very unhealthy ; the slave trade was the 

 means of introducing contagious diseases, which spread them- 



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