may not know how to entertain himself in the other life, each year
they send him a newsletter under the skin of a beheaded slave.

We ourselves differ from all the rest. In spite of the inscriptions on
the tombs, hardly any one believes that the dead rest, and much less,
that they rest in peace. The most optimistic fancies his forefathers
still roasting in purgatory and, if it turns out that he himself be
not completely damned, he will yet be able to associate with them for
many years. If any one would contradict let him visit the churches and
cemeteries of the country on All Saints' day and he will be convinced.

Now that we are in San Diego let us visit its cemetery, which is
located in the midst of paddy-fields, there toward the west--not a
city, merely a village of the dead, approached by a path dusty in dry
weather and navigable on rainy days. A wooden gate and a fence half
of stone and half of bamboo stakes, appear to separate it from the
abode of the living but not from the curate's goats and some of the
pigs of the neighborhood, who come and go making explorations among the
tombs and enlivening the solitude with their presence. In the center of
this enclosure rises a large wooden cross set on a stone pedestal. The
storms have doubled over the tin plate for the inscription INRI, and
the rains have effaced the letters. At the foot of the cross, as on
the real Golgotha, is a confused heap of skulls and bones which the
indifferent grave-digger has thrown from the graves he digs, and there
they will probably await, not the resurrection of the dead, but the
coming of the animals to defile them. Round about may be noted signs
of recent excavations; here the earth is sunken, there it forms a low
mound. There grow in all their luxuriance the _tarambulo_ to prick
the feet with its spiny berries and the _pandakaki_ to add its odor
to that of the cemetery, as if the place did not have smells enough
already. Yet the ground is sprinkled with a few little flowers which,
like those skulls, are known only to their Creator; their petals wear
a pale smile and their fragrance is the fragrance of the tombs. The
grass and creepers fill up the corners or climb over the walls and
niches to cover and beautify the naked ugliness and in places even
penetrate into the fissures made by the earthquakes, so as to hide
from sight the revered hollowness of the sepulcher.

At the time we enter, the people have driven the animals away, with the