What I saw on the west coast of South and North America, and at the Hawaiian Islands.: By H. Willis Baxley, M.D.

THE PANITHEON. The Pantheon of Santiago, like that of Lima, is on the smallest scale, not mnore than about fifteen acres being walled in for the cemetery of a city whose population certainly exceeds one hundred thousand. Such scant dimensions are scarcely pardonable, as it lies at the foot of Cerro Blanco-well adapted to purposes of sepulture, but nothing else. This cemetery is a splendid speeulation at the enormous charges made for temporary burial, the same leasehold interment prevailing here as in other SpanishAmerican countries, and the same horrid feature of gratuitous communism existing too. And if the immense receipts for conveyanee, burial, removal, and masses, had been appropriated to the purpose, the avenues and paths of the Pantheon might have been paved with gold by this time. A little chapel within the entrance tells the visitor that its uplifted cross is "Spes unico" -the sole hope-of those who pass that portal for the last time. There is more taste displayed than in Peru, in the adornment of the resting-place of the dead; cypresses, shrubbery, and flowers abound, and there are some appropriately designed and well-executed monuments. Some curiosity was felt to see the statue of which Lieut. J. MI. Gilliss (Superintendent of the United States Naval Astronomical Expedition to the Southern Hemisphere) said, one of the mausoleums "is surmounted by a nude figure of Grief executed in white marble, which, by order of the archbishop, has actually been covered with a petticoat of black cloth from the waist to the knees!" This declaration has been indignantly denied by Santiaguinos. Certainly no such attired figure is now seen; but a winged marble statue of Grief was observed, with inverted torch in the right hand, the left resting on an urn consecrated to the ashes of D. Juau lTenrique Rosales and D. Maria del Rosario Larrain, daubed with coarse cement in a manner designed to represent a fig-leaf. Whose vcandal delicacy is commemorated by this act I know not; but, the whole story of this offending specimen of the fine arts, and the sadness it was designed so touchingly to tell, is suggestive of tihe question-which is more obnoxious to criticism, the vulgar affectation of modesty that could not look upon nature with the purity that truth and virtue teach; or the misapprehension of duty which included in a formal report to the Congress of the 248

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Title
What I saw on the west coast of South and North America, and at the Hawaiian Islands.: By H. Willis Baxley, M.D.
Author
Baxley, Henry Willis, 1803-1876.
Canvas
Page 248
Publication
New York,: D. Appleton & company,
1865.
Subject terms
South America -- Description and travel
California -- Description and travel
Hawaii -- Description and travel

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"What I saw on the west coast of South and North America, and at the Hawaiian Islands.: By H. Willis Baxley, M.D." In the digital collection Making of America Books. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/abf7940.0001.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed June 23, 2025.
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