The procession, after passing two-thirds of the way up the spacious walk, turned down one of the narrower alleys, where a new tomb, built on a line with the others, gaped wide to receive its destined inmate. The procession stopped. The coffin was let down from the shoulders of the bearers, and rolled on wooden cylinders into the tomb. The mourners silently gathered around; every head was bared; and amid the deep silence that succeeded, the calm, clear, melancholy voice of the priest suddenly swelled upon the still evening air, in the plaintive chant of the last service for the dead. "Requiescat in pace!" was slowly chanted by the priest,--repeated in subdued voices by the mourners, and echoing among the tombs, died away in the remotest recesses of the cemetery.
The dead was surrendered to the companionship of the dead--the priest and mourners moved slowly away from the spot, and the silence of the still evening was only broken by the clinking of the careless mason, as he proceeded to wall up the aperture in the tomb.
As night was fast approaching, I hastened to leave the place; and, taking a shorter route than by the principal avenue, I came suddenly upon a desolate area, without a tomb to relieve its dank and muddy surface, dotted with countless mounds, where the bones of the moneyless, friendless stranger lay buried. There was no stone to record their names or country. Fragments of coffins were scattered around, and new-made graves, half filled with water, yawned on every side awaiting their unknown occupants; who, perchance, may now be "laying up store for many years" of anticipated happiness. Such is the nature of the soil here, that it is impossible to dig two feet below the surface without coming to water. The whole land seems to be only a thin crust of earth, of not more than three feet in thickness, floating upon the surface of the water. Consequently, every grave will have two feet or more of water in it, and when a coffin is placed therein, some of the assistants have to stand upon it, and keep it down till the grave is re-filled with the mud which was originally thrown from it, or it would float. The citizens, therefore, having a very natural repugnance to being drowned, after having died a natural death upon their beds, choose to have their last resting-place a dry one; and hence the great number of tombs, and the peculiar features of this burial-place.