I 



NOTICES OF PERU. 



313 



a temporary altar, under a silken tent, where women begged 

 for Santa Rosa. As we passed the pulperias at the different 

 corners, we heard the sound of the guitar and song, and beat- 

 ing of the rude drum. 



Beyond the city wall the concourse was great. Negroes on 

 borricos, and negresses and women of the lower orders sitting 

 astride sorry horses, hurried along and brushed by the more 

 leisurely moving calesas, bearing some of the most beautiful 

 women of Lima. The gay officers we saw under the portdles 

 were mounted, and their horses pranced and curvetted over 

 the road ; their heavily embroidered dresses glanced in the sun,, 

 and their gay plumes waved in the air. The new sayas (for all 

 put on a new saya on the day of All Saints) strolled along the 

 walls, and many a one was seated by the road side, gazing 

 from the mask on the moving multitude. 



When we reached the Pantheon, which is about a mile from 

 the city, the concourse became a dense crowd, and the road 

 was blocked up with calesas. Very few ladies alighted from 

 them, but remained to view the passing scene. 



We entered the resting place of the dead through a hall, in 

 the centre of which is a cast (probably of plaster) of the body 

 of our Saviour, in a sepulchre of glass. The whole is well ex~ 

 ecuted, and the wounds in the hands and feet are distinctly 

 seen. Around this tomb knelt a number of females of all colors, 

 and of all ranks in society, in new sayas, muttering salves for 

 the dead. The poorest seemed to be the most devout ; perhaps- 

 poverty is favorable to religion, by removing from us, in a 

 great measure, the temptations and vanities of the world I 



We soon reached the open yard, and saw persons moving in 

 every direction, examining the epitaphs and graves. What an 

 admirable appointment is the day of All Saints, to bring us to 

 a retrospection of the past, and remind us of our mortality \ 

 But, like many other well intended festivals of the Romish 

 church, it has become a day of rejoicing, instead of mourning 

 for our own and the sins of our deceased friends. 



Not far from the front of the building through which we 

 entered, there is a hollow pyramid, made of canes, plastered 

 over with mud, covering a deep and capacious vault^ in which 

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