Canada -- Description and travel; United States -- Description and travel
New Orleans has two fine parks, the City Park and Audubon Park, both
displaying collections of live oaks and magnolias, which are
picturesque. The city cemeteries also have many good trees and are
attractive and peculiar. The soil being semi-fluid at a depth of two
or three feet, nearly all the tombs are above ground, some being
costly and beautiful structures. Most of them, however, are buildings
composed of cells placed one above another to the height of seven or
eight feet. The cell is only large enough to receive the coffin, and
as soon as the funeral is over, it is hermetically bricked up at the
narrow entrance. These cells are called "ovens," and bear tablets
appropriately inscribed. The Cypress Grove Cemetery, near the City
Park, is one of the most interesting. In Greenwood Cemetery, near by,
is a monument to the Confederate dead, and General Albert Sidney
Johnston is interred in Metairie Cemetery, which also has his
equestrian statue. In some cases the graves are in earthen mounds,
while occasionally, where the interment is in the ground, the
grave-digging is so arranged as to be completed just as the funeral
arrives, and the coffin thus gets placed and covered before there is
time for much water to ooze into the grave. The most uniquely
picturesque sight in the city is furnished by the old French Market,
near the levee, in the early morning, when business is in full tide,
and the mixed population in peculiar costume and language is seen to
advantage. A favorite resort of the people is Lake Pontchartrain, five
miles north, the spacious inland sea covering nearly a thousand square
miles, to which fine shell roads lead.
THE LEVEES AND THE DELTA.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account