Rambles by Land and Water; or, Notes of Travel in Cuba and Mexico. Benjamin Moore Norman

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ recurrence is a great annoyance to those who have business at the Custom House, and other public offices, while they add nothing to the religious or moral aspect of the place. Sunday is distinguished from the other days of the week, only by the increase of revelry, cock-fighting, gambling, and every other species of unholy employment. These are certainly no improvement upon the customs of other days, for blind superstition is better than profaneness, and ignorance than open vice. But, in one respect, the protestant sojourner in Havana may feel and acknowledge that times have changed for the better, since he is not liable now, as formerly, to be knocked down in the street, or imprisoned, for refusing to kneel in the dirt, when "the host" was passing.

      In this Cathedral, on the right side of the great altar, is "The Tomb of Columbus." A small recess made in the wall to receive the bones, is covered with a marble tablet about three feet in length. Upon the face of this is sculptured, in bold relief, the portrait of the great discoverer, with his right hand resting upon a globe. Under the portrait, various naval implements are represented, with the following inscription in Spanish.

      ¡O Restos é Imagen del grande Colon!

       Mil siglos durad guardados en la Orna,

       Y en la remembranza de nuestra Nacion.

      On the left side of the high Altar, opposite the tomb, hangs a small painting, representing a number of priests performing some religious ceremony. It is very indifferent as a work of art, but possesses a peculiar value and interest, as having been the constant cabin companion of Columbus, in all his eventful voyages, a fact which is recorded in an inscription on a brass plate, attached to the picture.

      The Lines on the tablet may be thus translated into English.

      O Remains and Image of the great Columbus!

       A thousand ages may you endure, guarded in this Urn;

       And in the remembrance of our Nation.

      Such is the sentiment inscribed on the last resting place of the ashes of the discoverer of a world. An inscription worthy of its place, bating the arrogance and selfishness of the last line, which would claim for a single nation, that which belongs as a common inheritance to the world. It is a pardonable assumption however; for, where is the nation, under the face of heaven, that would not, if it could, monopolize the glory of such a name?

      The glory of a name! Alas! that those who win, are so seldom allowed to wear it! Through toil and struggle, through poverty and want, through crushing care and heart-rending disappointments, through seas of fire and blood, and perhaps through unrelenting persecution, contumely and reproach, they climb to some proud pinnacle, from which even the ingratitude and injustice of a heartless world cannot bring them down; and there, alone, deserted and pointed at, like an eagle entangled in his mountain eyrie, amid the screams and hootings of inferior birds, they die—bequeathing their greatness to the world, leaving upon the generation around them a debt of unacknowledged obligation, which after ages and distant and unborn nations, shall contend for the honor of assuming forever. The glory of a name! What a miserable requital for the cruel neglect and iron injustice, which repaid the years of suffering and self-sacrifice, by which it was earned!

      Columbus died at Valladolid, on the 20th of May, 1506, aged 70 years. His body was deposited in the convent of St. Francisco, and his funeral obsequies were celebrated with great pomp, in the parochial church of Santa Maria de la Antigua. In 1513, his remains were removed to Seville, and deposited, with those of his son, and successor, Don Diego, in the chapel of Santo Christo, belonging to the Carthusian Monastery of Las Cuevas. In 1536, the bodies of Columbus and his son were both removed to the island of Hispaniola, which had been the centre and seat of his vice-royal government in this western world, and interred in the principal chapel of the Cathedral of the city of San Domingo. But even here, they did not rest in quiet. By the treaty of peace in 1795, Hispaniola, with other Spanish possessions in these waters, passed into the hands of France. With a feeling highly honorable to the nation, and to those who conducted the negotiations, the Spanish officers requested and obtained leave to translate the ashes of the illustrious hero to Cuba.

      The ceremonies of this last burial were exceedingly magnificent and imposing, such as have rarely been rendered to the dust of the proudest monarchs on earth, immediately after their decease, and much less after a lapse of almost three centuries. On the arrival of the San Lorenzo in the harbor of Havana, on the 15th of January, 1796, the whole population assembled to do honor to the occasion, the ecclesiastical, civil, and military bodies vying with each other in showing respect to the sacred relics. On the 19th, every thing being in readiness for their reception, a procession of boats and barges, three abreast, all habited in mourning, with muffled oars, moved solemnly and silently from the ship to the mole. The barge occupying the centre of these lines, bore a coffin, covered with a pall of black velvet, ornamented with fringes and tassels of gold, and guarded by a company of marines in mourning. It was brought on shore by the captains of the vessels, and delivered to the authorities. Conveyed to the Plaza de Armas, in solemn procession, it was placed in an ebony sarcophagus, made in the form of a throne, elaborately carved and gilded. This was supported on a high bier, richly covered with black velvet, forty-two wax candles burning around it.

      In this position, the coffin was opened in the presence of the Governor, the Captain General, and the Commander of the royal marines. A leaden chest, a foot and a half square, by one foot in height, was found within. On opening this chest, a small piece of bone and a quantity of dust were seen, which was all that remained of the great Columbus. These were formally, and with great solemnity pronounced to be the remains of the "incomparable Almirante Christoval Colon." All was then carefully closed up, and replaced in the ebony sarcophagus.

      A procession was then formed to the Cathedral, in which all the pomp and circumstance of a military parade, and the solemn and imposing grandeur of the ecclesiastical ceremonial, were beautifully and harmoniously blended with the more simple, but not less heartfelt demonstrations of the civic multitude—the air waving and glittering with banners of every device, and trembling with vollies of musketry, and the ever returning minute guns from the forts, and the armed vessels in the harbor. The pall bearers were all the chief men of the island, who, by turns, for a few moments at a time, held the golden tassels of the sarcophagus.

      Arrived at the Cathedral, which was hung in black, and carpeted throughout, while the massive columns were decorated with banners infolded with black, the sarcophagus was placed on a stand, under a splendid Ionic pantheon, forty feet high by fourteen square, erected under the dome of the church, for the temporary reception of these remains. The architecture and decorations of this miniature temple, were rich and beautiful in the extreme. Sixteen white columns, four on each side, supported a splendidly friezed architrave and cornice, above which, on each side, was a frontispiece, with passages in the life of Columbus figured in bas-relief. Above this, rising out of the dome of the pantheon, was a beautiful obelisk. The pedestal was ornamented with a crown of laurels, and two olive branches. On the lower part of the obelisk were emblazoned the arms of Columbus, accompanied by Time, with his hands tied behind him—Death, prostrate—and Fame, proclaiming the hero immortal in defiance of Death and Time. Other emblematic figures occupied the arches of the dome.

      The pantheon, and the whole Cathedral, was literally a-blaze with the light of wax tapers, several hundred of which were so disposed as to give the best effect to the imposing spectacle. The solemn service of the dead was chanted, mass was celebrated, and a funeral oration pronounced. Then, as the last responses, and the pealing anthem, resounded through the lofty arches of the Cathedral, the coffin was removed from the Pantheon, and borne by the Field Marshal, the Intendente, and other distinguished functionaries, to its destined resting place in the wall, and the cavity closed by the marble slab, which I have already described.

      "When we read," says the eloquent Mr. Irving, "of the remains of Columbus, thus conveyed from the port of St. Domingo, after an interval of nearly three hundred СКАЧАТЬ