A Cuban Funeral

A CUBAN FUNERAL. BY DR. JOSEPH M. TANNER, SUPERINTENDENT OF CHURCH SCHOOLS.

The Colon cemetery is one of the great sights of Havana. It isbecoming more and more the practice to embellish the cities of the dead with the finest specimens of art; and Havana has nothing more artistic than her beautiful cemetery. It is the custom there to bury the dead between four and six o'clock in the afternoon, and tourists frequently take advantage of these hours to witness some of the peculiarities of Cuban life, in its relation to the dead. The cemetery is some distance from the city, but can be easily reached by means of the electric street car. Tourists often wait for hours about the cemetery to witness, perchance, some gorgeous pageantry, or watch the poor hurry the dead to their last resting place, on the shoulders of four or six negroes. We went out in the afternoon to look about the cemetery, and examine its beautiful monuments. Just as we were entering the large gates, a motley crowd came up with a coffin that was carried rapidly on the shoulders of four Cuban boys. It was dropped down for inspection, in front of the small house of the sexton that stands near the gate. A civil officer was on duty, and hurriedly fulfilled the requirements of the law by raising the lid of the coffin and looking at the corpse. Those near enough curiously gazed at the form of a young woman whose husband seemed to be very much affected, and, indeed, he was the only one that seemed to be the least concerned of what was going on. The Catholic priest then performed a brief ceremony which could not have required more than a half minute. The young man who seemed most affected remained near the gate, while the others hastily carried the coffin to the grave. We tried to keep up with the crowd, which hurried along as though it were anxious to finish the business with all possible speed. We had not gone far when we met a magnificent funeral

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cortege which was just leaving the cemetery. The elegant royallooking hearse was drawn by four beautiful horses, covered so by trappings that one might have almost imagined that it was a carnival float. In front of the horses marched four postilions. One funeral procession represented the necessities of the poor; the other, the opportunities of the rich. We hurried on to witness what was done at the grave. The coffin with the body was lowered a distance of four feet, and the dirt piled in, in a hasty and abrupt manner. In shoveling the dirt back, the bones and a part of the skull of a former occupant of the same grave were uncovered. The boys laughed over their discovery, and examined the skull which still had hanging to it long locks of auburn hair. The former occupant had simply a temporary resting place, and it was quite likely that most of the bones had been piled into the bone yard when a new lessee of the grave had purchased a second, or it may be, a twentieth, leasehold.At the end of five years, the same grave we now saw filled may be occupied by some one else. The poorer classes cannot afford to purchase burial lots which cost about $225. each. A grave is therefore leased for a period of five years. If it is to

be occupied by one person, the cost for that time is $10; if it is

to be occupied by three, one on top of another, the cost is only $3. for each person. If at the end of five years the lease is not continued, the corpse is taken up and thrown into the bone yard. The owners of the dead may, if they prefer, deposit the body in a large ditch, in a coffin, if they can afford it, and if not, one is lent them; but after the remains have been thrown into the ditch, or common trench, the coffin must be returned. Many never bother with their dead after once buried, so the authorities dig them up and throw them into the common bone pile which is in a corner of the cemetery, and was open to view until the American occupation. Drunken American soldiers sometimes took the bones and skulls from the yard and drove through the City of Havana bedecked with these ghastly remains of the dead. General Brooke put a stop to this. The hole was filled up, and a rock wall built around the place. Tourists, however, found a way to climb over the wall. From the inside, they selected a bone or two to carry away as a souvenir. In a trench near by were to be found remnants of decayed and broken coffins which had been piled into a.

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heap. The handles and ornaments were stripped from the coffins and carried away by tourists, as mementos of a peculiar custom which obtains in Cuba. The American Baptist Cemetery Association, whose graveyard is near by the Colon, follows, it is said, the

same rule with respect to the dead. In Cuba, the friends of the deceased are invited to the funeral. If well-to-do they always come in carriages. By custom of the country, women and children never attend funerals. After the interment, the gentlemen friends return to the home of the mourners with whom they shake hands as a token of sympathy. The Colon cemetery contains some beautiful specimens of Gothic architecture. The memorial of rarest beauty in the cemetery is the Firemen's Monument. Of its kind, it is, perhaps, the finest work of art in the world. The equitable climate of Cuba has

made it possible to give expression to a delicacy of art that is not found in colder climates, where wet and frost soon crumble away the finer carvings. This monument was erected in memory of those firemen who lost their lives in the great conflagration of May 17, 1890. The most interesting monument is that erected to the memory of the students who were shot at La Punta, on the 27th of November, 1871, by order of the Spanish military authorities. A Cuban had killed a colonel of the Volunteers, Gonzalez Castanon. It was later claimed that some students of the medical school had broken into the tomb and scratched the glass plate on his coffin.

The Volunteers were an organization of Spanish artisans and clerks that terrorized, for a long time, the Cubans of Havana. The civil authorities tried the students and, dismissed them for want of evidence. Later the Volunteers forced the military authorities to take up the case of the students. By the proceedings of a court martial, these students were tried again, convicted and executed. Twenty years after, the son of Castanon came from Spain to take his father's body to his native land, and then informed the public that the glass plate on the coffin had been scratched by the masons who had repaired the tomb. In sympathetic memory to the innocent lives of a large number of students, scarcely out of their teens, a beautiful monument has been erected.

Salt Lake City, Utah.