CHAPTER VII.
Rio de Janeiro.
September 16th.—There is no seaman’s chaplain or other American clergyman, at present at Rio; and the religious services of the Sabbath on board the Congress, since our arrival, have been attended by many of our compatriots, both ladies and gentlemen, residents here, including the Ambassador and Consul and their families. Occasions occur not unfrequently both in the shipping and on shore, calling for the special services of a Protestant minister of the Gospel. This has been the case within the passing week. The commander of an American schooner spoken by us the day we crossed the line, but which did not arrive till ten days after the Congress, died suddenly of apoplexy the morning he entered port. The schooner was put in quarantine, immediately, by the health officer; and it was with great difficulty permission was obtained from the authorities for the burial of the body on shore. Mr. Kent, the consul, formerly Governor of the State of Maine, solicited my attendance officially at the interment. This took place at the Protestant cemetery at Gamboa, a northern suburb of the city, situated on a broad indenture on the western side of the bay. Here the body had been carried by water. Gov. Kent took me in a calesa by land. The drive is through a mean and unattractive part of the city, by a winding course from street to street, between the hill of San Bento and that surmounted by the Bishop’s Palace.
This burial-ground was purchased by the foreign residents of Rio twenty-five or thirty years ago. It was then, and still is, comparatively, a secluded and rural spot, upon a hill-side overhung and crowned with trees, and commanding a beautiful view northward of the upper bay and its many islands; of the rich valleys to the west; and of the Organ Mountains sweeping majestically round in the distance. It is enclosed with high and substantial walls of stone, and is entered by an ornamental gateway of iron. From this a winding avenue of trees marks the ascent to a neat little chapel on a terrace near the centre of the ground. Here such religious services as may be desired, or can be secured, before committing the dead to the grave, are usually observed.
The morning was wet and gloomy, according well with the object of our visit, and the peculiar circumstances in which the burial was to take place. A funeral more sad in its desolateness could scarcely be: that of a stranger, in a strange land, unwept and unattended by any one who had ever seen, or ever heard of him when living. The consul, the undertaker, the grave-digger and I, as chaplain, being the only persons brought to the spot either by duty or humanity. The officers and crew of the schooner were in quarantine, and, from some omission or mistake in the arrangements, no representative from other American vessels in port was present.
The kindness of Gov. Kent, in giving his personal attendance, was at a sacrifice of feeling which could not fail to elicit my sympathy, though a stranger to him till within a few days past. It is but a very brief period, scarcely a month, since he committed to the newly-made grave near which we were standing, an only son of great promise just verging into manhood: one of the last of the victims of the late epidemic. The associations of the passing scene could not but revive in painful freshness a sorrow that has not yet lost its keenness.
The rain, and the wetness in every pathway, prevented all observation, except a general glance around, or any lingering among the memorials of those who rest here, far from the sepulchres of their fathers. It had been my purpose, before being called thus by duty to the spot, early to visit in it the tomb of my friend Tudor. This was the only one I now sought, to stand a moment beside it in remembrance of the dead, and, in thoughts of the living, who most loved him, but who may never be permitted to look upon his grave. It is marked by a plain white obelisk of Italian marble, bearing the following simple inscription:
Ossa
Gulielmi Tudor