THREE MILLION SKELETONS.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIII, Issue 221, 26 October 1878, Page 5

THREE MILLION SKELETONS.

A correspondent writes ns follows of a trip to the catacombs of Paris : —

We coiled, huggiog each other's backs, round and round, adown a stone stairway, until at Jast we were at the bottom, , apd fifty feet under Psria." Then there was a promenade of half«s= mile or ao, through various galleries of rock, through which numberless other galleries led. We were cautioned against branching off into any of these, and getting lobl, nnd didn't wish tc. Tnis part of trtinp ended in an archway, the side 3 of which were amiably enblaznned with pictures of big black coffins. Through this we pafsad. and were in, at a jump, to the thickest of the martinee. . .

It was no end of thigh bones and skulls till we couldn't rest. Nice smooth walls of bones, enlivened by the skulls in festoons, crosses, rosettes, and other choice designs. Of all the horrible wainscolin^s ever arranged, this was kiacr. We could just look over the lop of it, and beyond, running out into the darkness* §aw ; it was brimming over with bones and fragments of skulta heaped in confusedly and solidly. Only such skeletons as had kept at least part of themselves in decent repair, U&d been allowed to contribute to the front wall drees parade. All the: others were jumbled— ribs, heads, armjoints, pelvic arches, and collar bones into the mass behind. Over three million bodies, or what ia left of them, were beside and around us.. _

Think what that number means I Suite Irom life to-day, every human being in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and the death harvest would not equal the ghastly total of that garnered hce. Paris overhead has only two-thirds as many moneygrabbing, vain, uneasy, living, fleshcovered skeletons as she has stripped and silent ones in her catacombs.

The number is continually increasing. Old cemeteries are from time to time cleared away, she ground beiog needed for houses for «he living, and down in tbe catacombs come the bones once so tenderly inurned Slacked in the way they are her.?, there will be room for all ages hencp.

In this huddle of over three million how strange seems the individual pomp and sorrow with which each one originally went to the Rrave ! There is no "Please pasa down ihe front aisle, view the rera*ios and pass out at tha aide ; friends of the detoised come first." Here is scufib along, keep your candle alight, and don't wander away from the bea'en corriJors unless you woufd be lost and starve with three million skulls mocking you in the darkness.

In Parisian cemeteries many tombs and vaults are rented. If additional reut is not pail when the first siipenJ is exhausted, out »o the bodies to make roam for ireeh one?. : Talk about stealing the enppar from a dead man's eyee'l his not half aa mean as shying him into the world a^ain for non-pay-ment of rent. Boues thus bouocel eventually rest in the caiacouibs.

Ihe hideous honeycomb beneath Paris is T destiued to iiold the framework of every man, woman, and child that dies with her . cpntinee, Baautiful Pert-le-Chaiea will by -»"(}. bye be wanted for stores, dw 1 iogs, and mabilles. Then itie rilia of Abelard may garnish a catacomb's gallery, while railea away the skull of Heloiso grins from one of its wulle. — ' GIDBON,' ia Chicago Tribnie.