Page:The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton.djvu/336

304 torches lighting up the black figures humming against the walls, the heat and want of air, the horrid smells, the wild chant, reminded me of Dante. I wonder if he took some of his hells out of a mine?

Next day poor Mrs. Treloar died, after fifteen days of bilious attack. In this country, if you are well and strong, in good nerve and spirits, and can fight your own way, you do very well; but the moment you are sick, down with you, fall out of the ranks and die, unless you have some one who values your life as his own. But even this could not save poor Mrs. Treloar. Mr. Symmonds requested Richard, as English Consul, to perform the funeral service, as they had no church, no clergyman, no burial-ground; so they would not distress her mind by the knowledge that she was dying. My husband seemed to have been sent by Providence to perform this sad affair, as the English here hold greatly to their consuls performing a ceremony in the absence of a clergyman. The Treloars were to have gone home to England for good the previous month, having several of their children at school in England, and only put it off for that "little while" often so fatal in the tropics. She was buried on the hilltop, and was followed by all the men in the neighbourhood, black and white. Women do not attend funerals, nor sales, nor shops, nor post-offices in Brazil. Richard read the service, and I was left in charge of the house and blacks while they were all absent. A little before the funeral I heard a tremendous noise in the kitchen like the crashing of crockery, black women screaming, and men