Before I quitted Kentucky, I made a point of visiting the celebrated and immense nitre caverns or catacombs of the limestone region. Here I found the mummies of the pigmy race that once inhabited the gigantic valley of the Mississippi, adorned with strings of shell-wampum and turkeys' feathers—seated in death like the ancient Naso-menes, grinning at me with their long inhuman fore-teeth—and came out as wise as I went in.
"O," said the captain, "a burial in Canada is no trifle in winter. Just before you arrived, our drummer died, and we mustered spades, picks, and shovels, to dig a grave for him; but the ground was one rock every where, and after trying twenty places we found—that we had spoiled our tools. It took the armourer next day to steel them all. The third day we got down four inches and a half, in the softest soil we could find; but it would only grind up pinch by pinch. The fourth day the armourer was at work again. The fifth day the whole company turned out in a rage with the ground, and having got under the frost in some degree, sunk the grave full nine inches more. This night another soldier, a corporal, died; and his comrades were almost dead with disappointment and vexation. The bodies would keep in the frost very well; but we had not a spare room in the barrack, and their comrades wanted to get them out of the way of a wedding. Well, sir, the sixth day I divided the garrison in two, and set them at separate graves; but, unluckily, they drank to keep up their spirits in the battle with the frost, and fought about the corporal's right of priority, and the freezing point of brandy. Worst of all, they forgot to cover the new picked surfaces with straw and blankets, so that when they came in the morning the points of attack were as invulnerable as ever. In despair they buried both in one grave—the corporal undermost—without further efforts to attain a decent depth. As to six feet, it was quite unfathomable. They heaped all the stones they could loosen over the bodies, and the chaplain read prayers at last, after a 'week's preparation' and suspense, 'snow to snow, and ice to ice.' That night a herd of wolves came prowling by, and carried the corporal and drummer along with them. The fifer—an Irish rascal—was laughing heartily the whole week; and it was he set up the corporal's claim to the deep grave, to have his joke out. When all was over, the sergeant reported him to me, for bragging 'that he could have buried them six feet deep himself in two hours, and have covered them up so nately after, that the devil couldn't stick a tooth in them; but he had kept the secret to be revenged of the corporal, who had 'listed him one day,' and of the drummer who had 'flogged him.' 'Please your honour,' said he, when called before me, 'I was sartain you wished to find work for us this cowld weather, and it wouldn't become me to say what your honour knew as well as myself—that a rousing fire would soften any frost; and sure, only I know you compassionated the poor starving wolves, I'd have thrown a few buckets of water through the grave-stones, and clinched 'em as tight as the bars of Newgate.'"
The fertilizing properties of an individual in the chemical stage of his existence, seem only to have been fully recognised since the memorable battle of Waterloo; the fields of which now annually wave with luxuriant corn-crops, unequalled in the annals of "the old prize-fighting ground of Flanders." I have no doubt, however, that the cerealia of La Belle Alliance would have been much more nutritive if the top-dressing which the plain received during the three days of June, 1815, had not been robbed of its stamina by London dentists, who carried off the soldiers' teeth in hogsheads; and by Yorkshire bone-grubbers, who freighted several transports with the skeletons of regiments of troopers, as well as troop-horses, to be ground to dust in Kingston-upon-Hull, and drilled with turnip seed in the chalky districts of the North and West Ridings of Yorkshire. The corn of Waterloo is thus cheated of its phosphate of lime; but the spirits of Cyrus the Great and Numa the Wise, who had a fair knowledge of the fructifying capabilities of the "human form divine," must rejoice in beholding how effectually the fertilizing dust pushes the young Globes, Swedes, and Tankards into their rough leaves, that bid defiance to that voracious "Yorkshire bite" the turnip fly.
BIRTH SONG.
ANGEL OF WELCOME.
Hail, new-waked atom of the Eternal Whole,
Young voyager upon Time's rapid river!