A VISIT TO PERE-LA-CHAISE.

Auckland Star, Volume II, Issue 501, 18 August 1871, Page 3

A VISIT TO PERE-LA-CHAISE.

In Pere-la-Chaiso (says, a correspondent of the Daily News) there are plentiful evidences of Communist occupation.. Nobody need be at a loss ever to tell where Frenchmen have encamped. Nationals or regulars, they display a remarkable unanimity in the creation of dirt and filth. The resting-places of the dead arc defiled extensively. Bivouac fires have been fed with the wreaths of pious sorrow, and the trappings of woe have been torn down to make al fresco beds -wherewithal. But there has been no.gre.at amount of fighting in the cemetery. There is one infallible index to close fighting —the dents of bullets ; and of these there are not many in Pere-la-Chuise. Uere and there is a kepi, or a boot, or a knapBack, or a corpse. Shells have fallen freely, but indiscriminately, in the cemetery. Most of the monuments are of soft stone, and the shells huve ruined them terribly. Some of the monuments, I cannot help thinking, must have been used by the Federalists as ammunition depots, arid blown up either by them or by the Versailles shells. The result not unfrequently is yery ghastly. Coffins have been broken in, and the decomposing remains spattered against the walls of the vaults. But the si<'ht of Pere-la-Chaise in gbnstliness is reserved to the last. We make the circuit and come down on the south-eastern corn-r. Uere close by the boundary wall, is a natural hollow. It is full of dead.. You may measure the- dead, not by the head, but by the yard and rood. There they lie in a. double tier on the gruss, powdered over with a coating oi chloride of lime—a hundred and fifty of them patent to the eye, besides what have been hidden by the earth which the grave-diggers havefluug upon them. Among the dead are many women. There thrown up in th« sunlight is a wcll-iouiidecUrm With a ring on tiio finger ; there is a bust shapely in death ; and there are faces which make one sick to look upon, acBS distorted out of humanity with ferocity and iigonv combined. What.a strange variety of distortion, too, in the positions ! That man uillet have had a bullet through t:o spine, he g6O bt-nt, in tetanus. Anothoi —ho is a boy, and his fac is beautiful in death bis been of % nature whin my pen cannot designate* The gasfcly elleet of iho dusky white powdering on their dulled eyes, the gmwhed teeth, and the b>avd«, cannot bo described, and no c i.oride of lime can quell the tnint of ;ieath that arises out of this charnel-pit, recalling to me olfactory memories of Gravelotte nncl Sedan, llow, then, died these men and women "J^VVere they carted there dead, and laid out ijjithis ghastly lying-in-state in this deud-holb of the I'ere-ln-Ohaise P Not so; the hole has been re, le- i-hed from a quarter much nearer at hand. There is the feeder quite close by. You require no playbill to guide you to this act of the tragedy. They took—where I know nut but they pasted them up against this pock-pitted wall close by the dead-holi* hero, and they shot them as they stood or crouched. You cannot fail in your discernment, for the wall is clotted with gore and brains ainona the bullet holes, and there are lumps and" gouts of dried blood in the tangled grass at the wall foot. There was another shooting match across the road, on thu edge of the quarry. Here there was a hole dug, about knee deep, to hold the people •while they were being shot. The sun's rays have not got to thei bottom of thiß trough ytt, and the blood is yet wet there; all around are gouti. Sonie.coi-pstß must haye been distai

bo welled before they were dragged across into the corner. Let me leave the blood-stained spot, with the summary that grass, earth, stones, and clay are smeared in universal blood i but they will not cover up the corpses on which the crowds of visitors are looking down in horror. No! Graves are scarce, and so is willing labor. There are more to come, and so these lie and fester in the sunlight under their coat-ing of chloride of lime till another tier covers them, and the place is ripe for being cor red with the soil.