40 
PARK AND CEMETERY 
Montreal proudly' shows to her visitors. It is finely 
placed in the old Place d’Armes, the very centre of 
business and trade, surrounded by massive banks, 
insurance offices, and the principal cathedral in the 
city (Notre Dame). The architecture of the monu- 
ment is worthy of its splendid statuary. The de- 
tails, the bronze reliefs, the fountain around the 
granite base, all are well considered, and interest- 
ing in themselves. William Hoivc Doivnes. 
CRISTOBAL COLON CEMETERY IN HAVANA, CUBA^ 
The present interest in matters pertaining to 
Cuba should make the following by John S. Ken- 
dall in the New Orleans Picayune, entertaining. 
After stating that the bone pile, of which so much 
has been written, had been covered with two feet of 
earth, and describing the crude and irreverent 
methods of dealing with the dead, the writer con- 
tinues ; “In the poorer parts of the cemetery one 
may frequently see a typical Cuban funeral — typ- 
ical not merely because it occurs so frequently, but 
because the grinning attendants, the manifest love 
of show and the moral obtuseness of the race are all 
in evidence. It is not unusual to run across three 
or four cheap funerals approaching the cemetery at 
one time. They are very pathetic. The coffin, 
borne on the shoulders of four men, is sometimes 
followed by a little band of bareheaded mourners, 
but more frequently makes its last journey alone. 
It is not strictly accurate to speak of the coffin 
making its last journey, because most of the time 
it is a coffin which is farmed out by the undertaker 
and used merely to bring the body to the grave, 
after which it must be returned. In that way one 
coffin is used scores of times. 
“ In San Jo 5 e de las Lajas I was shown one such 
coffin which had done duty for the reconcentrados. 
The people said it had buried 4,000 corpses. So 
the custom appears to be universal throughout the 
island. 'When such a funeral reaches its destination, 
the mourners stand around and watch the cemetery 
employes break open the coffin and take out the body, 
which is then lowered into the grave with ropes. 
“But Cuba is a land of. contrasts. The hapless 
fate of the pauper dead is in marked contrast with 
the gorgeous mausoleums in which the rich lay 
their dead to rest. In the same cemetery, almost 
within stone’s throw of each other, stand the 
wooden crosses which mark the poorer graves and 
the superb marble monuments which mark the 
graves of counts and grandees of Spain. As you 
enter the cemetery through superb gates of rose- 
colored stone, elaborately carved, and fitted with 
bas-reliefs of scriptural subjects in Italian marble, 
the visitor is confronted by a magnificent avenue 
lined with trees and leading up toa graceful chapel. 
On either hand are the monuments — the exquisite 
monuments to the students who were killed in 
Havana in a riot someyears ago, and the celebrated 
firemen’s monument, built within the last three or 
four ymars, to commemorate the deaths of fifty or 
sixty" young men belonging to the volunteer fire 
department of Havana, who perished in an explosion 
of gunpowder in a burning warehouse. 
“ The Diario de la Marina, the leading morning 
paper of Havana, raised a fund of $180,000 with 
which the expense of having the monument executed 
by the best Italian artists was defrayed. It is a 
singularly noble work. A solid marble shaft orna- 
mented with the insignia of the firemen, rises from 
an elaborate sarcophagus surrounded by medallions 
of the young men who died. The shaft is sur- 
mounted by the figure of an angel pointing to 
heaven, while with the other arm she supports a 
dying fireman. At the angles of the sarcophagus 
are placed statues of women representing ‘ Fame,’ 
‘ Heroism,’ ‘ Grief’ and ‘ Duty.’ 
“It is in this cemetery also that the Maine vic- 
tims lie. In a previous letter I gave a description 
of the unkept condition in which we found that 
sacred spot when we first came here. The bodies of 
our seamen are placed on a narrow avenue in the 
less conspicuous, but by no means obscure, part of 
the cemetery. When we first saw them the place 
was marked merely by a badly-faded xAmerican 
flag stuck in the ground. It was a very little 10- 
cent flag, and ridicuously out of place. A gas-pipe 
cross with a painted sign ‘Victimas del Maine, ’and 
a neat wooden cross raised to the heroic dead 
by the J. Bruno Zayas Club of Cubans, were the 
only other marks. Now the association ot xAmer- 
ican ladies in Havana have placed on the spot a 
wooden cross 8 or 10 feet high, with a suitable in- 
scription painted on a medallion at the intersection 
of the arms. The remains of the artificial flowers 
which were placed on the graves in great abund- 
ance on the anniversary of the destruction of the 
Maine are still there, but they have been sadly 
mutilated by relic hunters. There was at one time 
talk of digging up the bones and relegating them to 
the bone pile, because the ground where they lie 
does not belong to the United States, and was 
merely rented, according to the custom of the ceme- 
tery. Naturally no rent has been paid for some 
time. But I don’t think these bones will ever be 
disturbed even by the godless cemetery people. 
But the place ought to be marked by some adequate 
monument. The failure of the xAmerican people to 
provide such has often been commented on. Some 
day, I presume. Congress will be wakened to the 
fact that the national honor demands a monument 
there, and then perhaps it will be built.” 
