The South-West, by a Yankee. In Two Volumes. Volume 1

by J. H. Ingraham

Canal-street, as I have in a former letter observed, with its triple row of young sycamores, extending throughout the whole length, is one of the most spacious, and destined at no distant period, to be one of the first and handsomest streets in the city. Every building in the street is of modern construction, and some blocks of its brick edifices will vie in tasteful elegance with the boasted granite piles of Boston.

Yesterday, after a late dinner, the afternoon being very fine, I left my hotel, and without any definite object in view, strolled up this street. The first object which struck me as worthy of notice was a small brick octagon church, enclosed by a white paling, on the corner of Bourbon-street. The entrance was overgrown with long grass, and the footsteps of a worshipper seemed not to have pressed its threshold for many an unheeded Sunday. In its lonely and neglected appearance, there was a silent but forcible comment upon that censurable neglect of the Sabbath, which, it has been said, prevails too generally among the citizens of New-Orleans. In front of this church, which is owned, I believe, by the Episcopalians, stands a white marble monument, surmounted by an urn, erected in memory of the late Governor Claiborne. With this solitary exception, there are no public monuments in this city. For a city so ancient, (that is, with reference to cis-Atlantic antiquity) as New-Orleans, and so French in its tastes and habits, I am surprised at this; as the French themselves have as great a mania for triumphal arches, statues, and public monuments, as had the ancient Romans. But this fancy they seem not to have imported among their other nationalities; or, perhaps, they have not found occasions for its frequent exercise.

The government house, situated diagonally opposite to the church, and retired from the street, next attracted my attention. It was formerly a hospital, but its lofty and spacious rooms are now convened into public offices. Its snow-white front, though plain, is very imposing; and the whole structure, with its handsome, detached wings, and large green, thickly covered with shrubbery in front, luxuriant with orange and lemon trees, presents, decidedly, one of the finest views to be met with in the city. These two buildings, with the exception of some elegant private residences, are all that are worth remarking in this street, which, less than a mile from the river, terminates in the swampy commons, every where surrounding New-Orleans, except on the river side.

Not far beyond the government house, the Mall, which ornaments the centre of Canal-street, forms a right angle, and extends down Rampart-street to Esplanade-street, and there making another right angle, extends back again to the river, nearly surrounding the "city proper" with a triple row of sycamores, which, in the course of a quarter of a century, for grandeur, beauty, and convenience, will be without a parallel. The city of New-Orleans is planned on a magnificent scale, happily and judiciously combining ornament and convenience. Let the same spirit which foresaw and provided for its present greatness, animate those who will hereafter direct its public improvements, and New-Orleans, in spite of its bug-bear character and its unhealthy location, will eventually be the handsomest, if not the largest city in the United States.

Following the turning of the Mall, I entered Rampart-street, which, with its French and Spanish buildings, presented quite a contrast to the New-England-like appearance of that I had just quitted. There are some fine buildings at the entrance of this street, which is not less broad than the former. On the right I passed a small edifice, much resembling a Methodist meeting-house, such as are seen in northern villages, which a passing Frenchman, lank and tall, in answer to my inquiry, informed me was "L'eglise Evangelique, Monsieur," with a touch of his chapeau, and a wondrous evolution of his attenuated person. This little church was as neglected, and apparently unvisited as its episcopalian neighbour. A decayed, once-white paling surrounded it; but the narrow gate, in front of the edifice, probably constructed to be opened and shut by devout hands, was now secured by a nail, whose red coat of rust indicated long and peaceable possession of its present station over the latch. Comment again, thought I, as I passed on down the street, to where I had observed, not far distant, a crowd gathered around the door of a large white-stuccoed building, burthened by a clumsy hunch-backed kind of tower, surmounted by a huge wooden cross.

On approaching nearer, I discovered many carriages extended in a long line up the street, and a hearse with tall black plumes, before the door of the building, which, I was informed, was the Catholic chapel. Passing through the crowd around the entrance, I gained the portico, where I had a full view of the interior, and the ceremony then in progress. In the centre of the chapel, in which was neither pew nor seat, elevated upon a high frame or altar, over which was thrown a black velvet pall, was placed a coffin, covered also with black velvet. A dozen huge wax candles, nearly as long and as large as a ship's royal-mast, standing in candlesticks five feet high, burned around the corpse, mingled with innumerable candles of the ordinary size, which were thickly sprinkled among them, like lesser stars, amid the twilight gloom of the chapel. The mourners formed a lane from the altar to the door, each holding a long, unlighted, wax taper, tipped at the larger end with red, and ornamented with fanciful paper cuttings. Around the door, and along the sides of the chapel, stood casual spectators, strangers, and negro servants without number. As I entered, several priests and singing-boys, in the black and white robes of their order, were chanting the service for the dead. The effect was solemn and impressive. In a few moments the ceremony was completed, and four gentlemen, dressed in deep mourning, each with a long white scarf, extending from one shoulder across the breast, and nearly to the feet, advanced, and taking the coffin from its station, bore it through the line of mourners, who fell in, two and two behind them, to the hearse, which immediately moved on to the grave-yard with its burthen, followed by the carriages, as in succession they drove up to the chapel, and received the mourners. The last carriage had not left the door, when a man, followed by two little girls, entered from the back of the chapel, and commenced extinguishing the lights:—he, with an extinguisher, much resembling in size and shape an ordinary funnel, affixed to the extremity of a rod ten feet long, attacking the larger ones, while his youthful coadjutors operated with the forefinger and thumb upon the others. In a few moments every light, except two or three, was extinguished, and the "Chapel of the Dead" became silent and deserted.

To this chapel the Roman Catholic dead are usually brought before burial, to receive the last holy office, which, saving the rite of sepulture, the living can perform for the dead. These chapels are the last resting-places of their bodies, before they are consigned for ever to the repose of the grave. To every Catholic then, among all temples of worship, these chapels—his last home among the dwelling-places of men—must be objects of peculiar sanctity and veneration.

Burial-grounds, even in the humblest villages, are always interesting to a stranger. They are marble chronicles of the past; where, after studying the lively characters around him, he can retire, and over a page that knows no flattery, hold communion with the dead.

The proposition that "care for the dead keeps pace with civilization" is, generally, true.—The more refined and cultivated are a people, the more attention they pay to the performance of the last offices for the departed. The citizens of the United States will not certainly acknowledge themselves second to any nation in point of refinement. But look at their cemeteries. Most of them crown some bleak hill, or occupy the ill-fenced corners of some barren and treeless common, overrun by cattle, whose preference for the long luxuriant grass, suffered to grow there by a kind of prescriptive right, is matter of general observation. Our neglect of the dead is both a reproach and a proverb. Look at England; every village there has its rural burying-ground, which on Sundays is filled with the well-dressed citizens and villagers, who walk among the green graves of parents, children, or friends, deriving from their reflections the most solemn and impressive lesson the human heart can learn. In America, on the contrary, the footsteps of a solitary individual, the slow and heavy tramp of a funeral procession, or the sacrilegious intrusion of idle school-boys—who approach a grave but to deface its marble—are the only disturbers of the graveyard's loneliness.

But even England is behind France. There every tomb-stone is crowned with a chaplet of roses, and every grave is a variegated bed of flowers. Spain, dark and gloomy Spain! is behind all. Whoever has rambled among her gloomy cemeteries, or gazed with feelings of disgust and horror, upon the pyramids of human sculls, bleaching in those Golgothas, the Campos santos of Monte Video, Buenos Ayres, and South America generally, need not be reminded how little they venerate what once moved—the image of God! The Italians singularly unite the indifference of the Spaniards with the affection of the French in their respect for the dead. Compare the "dead vaults" of Italia's cities, with the pleasant cemeteries in her green vales! Without individualising the European nations, I will advert to the Turks, who, though not the most refined, are a sensitive and reflecting people, and pay great honours to their departed friends, as the mighty "City of the Dead" which encompasses Constantinople evinces. But the cause of this respect is to be traced, rather to their Moslem creed, than to the intellectual character, or refinement of the people.