Letters of a Traveller; Or, Notes of Things Seen in Europe and AmericaBryant, William Cullen
General
Letters of a Traveller; Or, Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America
Bryant, William Cullen
Cuba -- Description and travel; Europe -- Description and travel; United States -- Description and travel
When the player had drawn the final squeak from his violin, we got into
our vehicle, and in somewhat more than an hour were entering the little
village of Nazareth, pleasantly situated among fields the autumnal verdure
of which indicated their fertility. Nazareth is a Moravian village, of
four or five hundred inhabitants, looking prodigiously like a little town
of the old world, except that it is more neatly kept. The houses are
square and solid, of stone or brick, built immediately on the street; a
pavement of broad flags runs under their windows, and between the flags
and the carriage-way is a row of trees. In the centre of the village is a
square with an arcade for a market, and a little aside from the main
street, in a hollow covered with bright green grass, is another square, in
the midst of which stands a large white church. Near it is an avenue, with
two immense lime-trees growing at the gate, leading to the field in which
they bury their dead. Looking upon this square is a large building, three
or four stories high, where a school for boys is kept, to which pupils are
sent from various parts of the country, and which enjoys a very good
reputation. We entered the garden of this school, an inclosure thickly
overshadowed with tall forest and exotic trees of various kinds, with
shrubs below, and winding walks and summer-houses and benches. The boys of
the school were amusing themselves under the trees, and the arched walks
were ringing with their shrill voices.
We visited also the burying place, which is situated on a little eminence,
backed with a wood, and commands a view of the village. The Moravian grave
is simple in its decorations; a small flat stone, of a square shape, lying
in the midst, between the head and foot, is inscribed with the name of the
dead, the time and place of his birth, and the time when, to use their own
language, he "departed," and this is the sole epitaph. But innovations
have been recently made on this simplicity; a rhyming couplet or quatrain
is now sometimes added, or a word in praise of the dead. One recent grave
was loaded with a thick tablet of white marble, which covered it entirely,
and bore an inscription as voluminous as those in the burial places of
other denominations. The graves, as in all Moravian burying grounds, are
arranged in regular rows, with paths at right angles between them, and
sometimes a rose-tree is planted at the head of the sleeper.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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