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Some doubt has already been expressed as to whether the grave is beneath the monument or in the inclosure; and it is also asserted that Paine's ghost appears at intervals, hovering in the air between the two burial-places, or flitting back and forth from one to the other, lamenting the forgetfulness of men and wailing, "Where is my grave? I have lost my grave!"
"You must know," said Mrs. Pitt, "that the cloisters were something besides burial-places. Here the monks spent most of their time, for this was the center of the life of the monastery. The southern cloister, over opposite, was the lavatory, and there the monks were forced to have their heads shaved, every two weeks in summer, and every three in winter.
"But with so many people about it would be well-nigh impossible to do this without observation unless, indeed, the search was made at night or after the workmen had departed, which would hardly be likely to happen. Therefore I think it impossible for you to stay here more than another day or two; but there are many caves and burial-places higher up on the hillside where you might be concealed.
"This mound and yonder three, were, the burial-places of the Natchez Indians. The Suns and Sachems sleep here, and he, the Great Sun, who came from the orbit's self, and was their lawgiver, and in whom and whose divinity they believed as the Jews in that of Moses, or the Christians in the Redeemer. Is it not all a mystery strange, strange, incomprehensible, and unnatural? What is your faith?"
There can scarcely be found the slightest trace of their occupancy of these rich acres. Nations that build nothing but uninscribed burial-places foreshadow their own doom, to return to the soil and be forgotten. But the mode of their passing away is not, therefore, a matter of indifference.
Portsmouth is rich in graveyards they seem to be a New England specialty ancient and modern. Among the old burial-places the one attached to St. John's Church is perhaps the most interesting. It has not been permitted to fall into ruin, like the old cemetery at the Point of Graves. When a headstone here topples over it is kindly lifted up and set on its pins again, and encouraged to do its duty.
This man, by reason of the interest that he had in the old church, the principal chapel and the high-altar of which belonged to his house, took very great pains therewith; nay, at the beginning, before the money had been collected from the taxes imposed on the owners of burial-places and chapels, he spent many thousands of crowns of his own, for which he was repaid.
One of the first improvements that suggested itself about our new dwelling, was the removal of some very unsightly pickets surrounding two or three Indian graves, on the esplanade in front of the house. Such, however, is the reverence in which these burial-places are held, that we felt we must approach the subject with great delicacy and consideration.
Thaxter says, large quantities of soil are annually washed into the sea; so that the islands may have been better clad with earth and its productions than now. Mrs. Thaxter tells me that there are several burial-places on this island; but nobody has been buried here since the Revolution.
No outrage is greater to the Indians than to desecrate the burial-places of their dead. They often make sacrifices to them, and celebrate anniversaries of the dead with dancing and feasting. The Chinese feast their dead at regular intervals, and carry them thousands of miles across the ocean from foreign countries to rest in their own land at last.
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