Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/100

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NOTES- AND QUERIES. [9 th s. vm. JULY 27, 1901.

about the archbishop's cross. I have before me two excellent photographs of the cross, made just before it was presented to the archbishop. There is no semblance of a crook in any part of it.

Mr. Lee must have seen some design (happily rejected and forgotten) for some other cross. If it was ever carried out in metal it should be easy to say where it is. It is certainly not at Lambeth.

ALDENHAM.

St. Dunstan's.

UGO FOSCOLO IN LONDON (9 th S. vi. 326; vii. 150, 318, 476). There are no doubt many false accounts of human bodies after long periods of burial being found in a state well- nigh perfect. There have, however, been instances which do not seem to admit of doubt. One such is chronicled in your pages (' N. & Q.,' 5 th S. ii. 219), where it is stated that when the body of Dr. John Milner, the Roman Catholic bishop, was discovered at Wolverhampton after forty-eight years' inter- ment, it was so little altered that many of the old inhabitants who had known him in life recognized the features. K. P. D. E.

THE HALBERTS (9 th S. vi. 181 ; vii. 473 ; viii. 46). What I described I certainly saw with my own eyes, and I made inquiries at the time as to rods and thorns. I noted the result down then, and it was from these notes, and not from mere recollection, that I sent my communication to ' N. & Q.' To have been absolutely correct I should have said, " Saw once and heard often " ; for one does not care to watch such a performance twice. But it should be remembered that this was in time of war that the men were caught and forced to serve as soldiers, very often against their own religious and political convictions (there is always a clerical and anti-clerical side to politics in these countries), and severity is necessary to keep troops in the field on the side which first captures them. Doubtless in the small standing army, and in time of peace, such punishments are not customary perhaps unknown. As to this I cannot speak, but only of what I saw and heard.

But I have no reason to suppose things are different in war time now, for during the pre- sent bloody revolution in Colombo (now, I hope, drawing to a close, if not actually ended, but which has been raging since last October year, more than 25,000 men having been killed, the country devastated, and all industry and business at a standstill) a good deal of barbarity has undoubtedly gone on, as all those connected with the country know

very well. Only three weeks ago, discussing news brought by that mail of what was actually taking place, a Colombian of known integrity told me of occurrences which he justly described as "tortures purely medi- aeval." But the Colombians are a brave nation born fighters ; and if I have men- tioned circumstances not to their credit, let me record what I also saw at the battle of Garapalta (1876).

This fight lasted all day. Twelve thousand men were engaged ; 2,000 of them were killed and wounded before night. I saw it from the Alto de San Juan, in company with three other British subjects. One side was strongly entrenched behind bamboo stockades, the front of these being swept from either end by a mitrailleuse and a Gatling gun. Both parties were armed with breech-loading and repeating rifles. The battalion " Popa " attempted to take these trenches. When they attacked they were 500 strong; they retired at last not in confusion, but in per- fect order stopping and firing as they went, having finally only thirty men left. One officer actually reached the trenches, sprang on them, and planted within the colour he carried. General Camargo himself had two horses shot under him that day. These men are the bravest of the brave ; out there were no ambulances nor arrangements of that kind for the wounded.

It is useless to judge other nations by our standards, or war, as we hear of it through press censorship, by what it is in reality in a more or less primitive country at all events. This particular revolution (1876) was osten- sibly about the question of religion in the schools. We settle these matters differently. But in Colombia they have no football, cricket, nor golf ; war is their game, and they play it pretty roughly and thoroughly.

IBAGUE.

JAMES II. (9 th S. viii. 45). James II. died in the palace at St. Germain-en-Laye, which was lent to him by Louis XIV., and where he spent his twelve years of exile. On his deathbed he desired to be simply interred in the parish church of St. Germain, opposite the palace, but in his will were found direc- tions for burying him with his ancestors in Westminster Abbey. Consequently, Marie Beatrice, his queen, decided that his body should remain unburied until the restoration of their son which she firmly believed would come to pass and she had it placed in one of the chapels of the church of the Bene- dictines in the Faubourg St. Jacques, Paris, where it remained for a hundred and twelve years.