CHAPTER II. 
CATACOMBS OF PALERMO. 
Chief among the wonders of Palermo are the Catacombs 
of the Capuchin Convent, near the Porta d’Ossuna. It is 
said to he a place of great antiquity; many of the bodies 
have been preserved in it for centuries, and still retain much 
of their original freshness. Entering the ancient and ruinous 
court of the convent, distant about a mile from the city, I was 
conducted by a ghostly-looking monk through some dark pas¬ 
sages to the subterranean apartments of the dead. It was 
not my first visit to a place of this kind, but I must confess 
the sight was rather startling. It was like a revel of the 
lead—a horrible, grinning, ghastly exhibition of skeleton 
forms, sightless eyes, and shining teeth, jaws distended, and 
bony hands outstretched ; heads without bodies, and bodies 
without heads—the young, the old, the brave, the once beau¬ 
tiful and gay, all mingled in the ghastly throng. I walked 
through long subterranean passages, lined with the dead on 
both sides ; with a stealthy and measured tread I stepped, 
for they seemed to stare at the intrusion, and their skeleton 
fingers vibrated as if yearning to grasp the living in their em¬ 
brace. Long rows of upright niches are cut into the walls 
on each, side ; in every niche a skeleton form stands erect as 
in life, habited in a robe of black; the face, hands, and feet 
naked, withered, and of an ashy hue; the grizzled beards still 
hanging in tufts from the jaws, and in the recent cases the 
hair still clinging to the skull, but matted and dry. To each 
corpse is attached a label upon which is written the name 
and the date of decease, and a cross or the image of the 
Saviour. 
Soon recovering from the shock of the first impression, I 
