Tomb of the Goyeneche Family, in the General Cemetery, Lima
Mr. Kurt Waldemar Linn of New York
This photograph was taken in the General Cemetery in Lima
The General Cemetery possesses some of the finest works of marble monumental sculpture in South America. These masterpieces were done before the Pacific War in 1879 when Peru was an opulent country, and was not in the decadent and revolutionary state that it is in at the present time. Personally I do not like this cemetery because it is enclosed with high walls into which are set thousands of niches, a true Roman columbarium. Even in sunny daylight, it presents an ultra mournful appearance, no doubt due to congestion of room. If ever there was a City of the Dead, this is one. Near the main entrance is a pantheon, which must be passed through before reaching the cemetery proper. In front of it is a semi-rotunda bordered by exquisite marble busts and likenesses of Peru's famous dead of more than a half century ago. These are finely chiselled masterpieces of soft white gypsum-like marble, preserving to the present time their original aspects. These unblemished, untarnished sculptural likenesses are of statesmen, professors, and so forth, dignified, with nothing in common with the uncouth rabble of Lima to-day. It is just as well that the men whose remains are interred beneath these pedestals have long since died for they have not witnessed the humiliating defeat of their fatherland and the surrender of the nitrate fields of Iquique, together with the loss of Tacna and Arica, nor did they hear the tramp through Lima's streets of the Chilean conquerors.
Mr. Linn of New York Rising out of the Tomb Erected in Honor of the Peruvian Heroes of the Pacific War, 1879-1882