Page:Incidents of travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan.djvu/294

216 of a child to the cemetery. We followed, and passing it at the gate, entered through a chapel, at the door of which sat three or four men selling lottery tickets, one of whom asked us if we wished to see the grave of our countryman. We assented, and he conducted us to the grave of a young American whom I had known by sight, and several members of whose family I knew personally. He died about a year before my visit, and his funeral was attended with mournful circumstances. The vicar refused him burial in consecrated ground. Dr. Bridley, who was the only European resident in Cartage, and at whose house he died, rode over to San José, and, making a strong point of the treaty existing between the United States and Central America, obtained an order from the government for his burial in the cemetery. Still the fanatic vicar, acting, as he said, under a higher power, refused. A messenger was sent to San José, and two companies of soldiers were ordered to the doctor's house to escort the body to the grave. At night men were stationed at its side to watch that it was not dug up and thrown out. The next day the vicar, with the cross and images of saints, and all the emblems of the church, and a large concourse of citizens, moved in solemn procession to the cemetery, and formally reconsecrated the ground which had been polluted by the burial of a heretic. The grave is the third from the corridor.

In the corridor, and in an honoured place among the principal dead of Cartage, lay the body of another stranger, an Englishman named Baillie. The day before his death the alcalde was called in to draw his will, who, according to the customary form, asked him if he was a Christian. Mr. Baillie answered yes; and the alcalde wrote him Catolico Romano Apostolico Christiano. Mr. Baillie himself did not contemplate this; he knew the difficulty in the case of my countryman about six months before; and wishing to spare his friends a disagreeable, and, perhaps, unsuccessful controversy, had already indicated a particular tree under which he wished to be buried. Before the will was read to him he died. His answer to the alcalde was considered evidence of his orthodoxy; his friends did not interfere, and he was buried under the special direction of the priests, with all the holiest ceremonies of the Church. It was the greatest day ever known in Cartago. The funeral was attended by all the citizens. The procession started from the door of the church, headed by violins and drums; priests followed, with all the crosses, figures of saints, and banners that had been accumulating from the foundation of the city. At the corners of the plaza and of all the principal streets, the procession stopped to sing hallelujahs, to represent the joy in Heaven over a sinner that repents.