f-crazed, drunken,
naked wretches were fighting with the ferocity of tigers, and the
mourners soon joining in the fray, a general combat ensued, in the fury
of which, the table on which lay the body was overturned, and the corpse
was crushed beneath the feet of the combatants.

Leaving this appalling scene, the boy and the stranger passed on, until
they stood before a cave which was literally crammed with human beings.
Men and women, boys and girls, young children, negroes, and _hogs_ were
laying indiscriminately upon the ground, in a compact mass. Some were
cursing each other with fierce oaths; and horrible to relate! negroes
were lying with young white girls, and several, unmindful of the
presence of others, were perpetrating the most dreadful enormities.
These beings were vile and loathsome in appearance, beyond all human
conception; every one of them was a mass of rags, filth, disease, and
corruption. As the stranger surveyed the loathsome group, he said to his
guide, with a refinement of speech he had not before assumed--

'Had any one, two hours ago, assured me that such a place as this,
containing such horrible inmates, existed in the very heart of the city,
I would have given him the lie direct! But I see it for myself, and am
forced to believe it.'

'These wretches,' said the boy--'are many of them related to each other.
There are husbands and wives there; mothers and children; brothers and
sisters. Yet they all herd together, you see, without regard to nature
or decency. Why the crime of _incest_ is as common among them as dirt! I
have known a mother and her son--a father and his daughter--a brother
and sister--to be guilty of criminal intimacy! Those wretched children
are many of them the offspring of such unnatural and beastly
connections. In my opinion, those hogs have as good a claim to humanity,
as those brutes in human form!'

'And how came those hogs to form part of the inhabitants of this
infernal place?' asked the stranger.

'You must know,' replied the boy,'that these vaults communicate with the
common street _sewers_ of the city; well, those animals get into the
sewers, to devour the vegetable matter, filth and offal that accumulate
there; and, being unable to get out, they eventually find their way to
these vaults. Here they are killed and eaten by the starving wretches.
And would you believe it?--these people derive almost all their food
from these sewers. They take out the decayed vegetables