James's cemetery yesterday. It is a very pretty
place, dug out of the rock, having formerly, I believe, been a
stone-quarry. It is now a deep and spacious valley, with graves and
monuments on its level and grassy floor, through which run gravel-paths,
and where grows luxuriant shrubbery. On one of the steep sides of the
valley, hewn out of the rock, are tombs, rising in tiers, to the height
of fifty feet or more; some of them cut directly into the rock with
arched portals, and others built with stone. On the other side the bank
is of earth, and rises abruptly, quite covered with trees, and looking
very pleasant with their green shades. It was a warm and sunny day, and
the cemetery really had a most agreeable aspect. I saw several
gravestones of Americans; but what struck me most was one line of an
epitaph on an English woman, "Here rests in peace a virtuous wife." The
statue of Huskisson stands in the midst of the valley, in a kind of
mausoleum, with a door of plate-glass, through which you look at the dead
statesman's effigy.
September 22d.--. . . . Some days ago an American captain came to the
office, and said he had shot one of his men, shortly after sailing from
New Orleans, and while the ship was still in the river. As he described
the event, he was in peril of his life from this man, who was an
Irishman; and he fired his pistol only when the man was coming upon him,
with a knife in one hand, and some other weapon of offence in the other,
while he himself was struggling with one or two more of the crew.
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