In New Mexico the lower classes are very rarely, if ever, buried in coffins: the corpse being simply wrapped in a blanket, or some other covering, and in that rude attire consigned to its last home. It is truly shocking to a sensitive mind to witness the inhuman treatment to which the remains of the dead are sometimes subjected. There being nothing to indicate the place of the previous graves, it not unfrequently happens that the partially decayed relics of a corpse are dug up and forced to give place to the more recently deceased, when they are again thrown with the earth into the new grave with perfect indifference. The operation of filling up the grave especially, is particularly repulsive; the earth being pounded down with a large maul, {266} as fast as it is thrown in upon the unprotected corpse, with a force sufficient to crush a delicate frame to atoms. [Pg054] As the remains of heretics are not permitted to pollute either the church-yard or _Campo Santo_, those Americans who have died in Santa Fé, have been buried on a hill which overlooks the town to the northward. The corpses have sometimes been disinterred and robbed of the shroud in which they were enveloped; so that, on a few occasions, it has been deemed expedient to appoint a special watch for the protection of the grave. FOOTNOTES: [11] Religious freedom, and entire separation of church and state, were secured in Mexico, after a long and bitter struggle, by the constitution of 1873.--ED. [12] Brantz Mayer (1809-79), a native of Baltimore, Maryland, historian and diplomat. In 1843 he was secretary of legation at Mexico, and upon his return published _Mexico as it was and as it is_ (New York, 1844), to which book Gregg here refers. Mayer was the author of several other works, both on Mexico and American history, and founder of the Maryland Historical Society.--ED. [13] This is a kind of mantle or loose covering worn by the Indians, which, in the present instance, was made of the coarse filaments of a species of maguey, and a little resembled the common coffee sacks. The painting, as it necessarily must be on such a material, is said to be coarse, and represents the Virgin covered with a blue robe bespangled with stars.--GREGG.