The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, June 14, 1896, Page 19

THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, JUNE 14, 1896 19 UDDEST BURVING PLACE ON THE EARTH Your Friends Rent Your Cof- fin for a Brief Period Only. ‘ Then You Go to the Boneyard, | Where Your Fellow-Citizens | Lie Twenty Feet Deep. Altars Down Deep in a Strange Old Mine—Queer Crypts and Mum- mificd Bodies. Ex-Assemblyman P. H. Mack of Inyo County, who is engaged with Attorney | Patrick Reddy in some mining enterprises in the strange little State of Guanajuato, Mexico, 1000 miles below El Paso, is at the | Russ. He tells a remarkable story of the | queer burial customs in the ancient city of | Guanajuato, the capital of the little State, | a place 350 years old. It is a story of a strange human bone- yard, of crypts in a mountain side; and of mummified bodies, the like of which have not been seen since the explorations among the Egyptians. It is different from anything of which he has ever heard or read, and filled him with awe as he con- templated it., | Itis at the old city in the heart of Mex- 1co where the burying-ground is that Mr. Mack is interested in the mining enter- | prise alluded to. *The burying ground is on a high point of a mountain near the town,” said he | yesterday, “and is nearly 100 vards square. | It is inclosed by a wall twelve feet in | height and eight feet thick, and in the walls are pigeon-hole-like places, orcrypts, | for the bodies. “When a man_dies bis relatives can, on the payment of $40, get him put in one of | these crypts. The ends are sealed up, and he is allowed to stay there for five years. ‘At the end of that time, if his relatives come forward and pay $100 more the re- | mains are allowed to remain there per- | GAN FRANCISCO'S WONDERFUL CHILD ARTIST—EMIL CRAPUCHETTE, the four-year- petually. If, however, the relatives have | died, moved away or fail to put up the | $100 the remains are taken out, carted | away and put into a great boneyard near | at hand, where remains have in like man- | old boy of Fo‘lsom Street, Who Displays Remarkable Skill in Drawing Pictures. citizens have all been stowed away there. | : ; “There are beautiful churches there, xvur' L.\c«'umuln‘led and where bones now | pyij¢ during the reign of the Mexican ie twenty feet deep. kings, and down in the wonderfally deep “"There is a flight of steps leading down | nines are altars built for the use of the into a passage-way, which is 300 feet long. | { is . | ancient miners. | Attheend of this passage-way isagreat| «Tne principal mine there now is the | yard, or excavation, for the cast-off bones. | yajenciana, and it has no less than thirty- | Itis here that they are piled to suchan | two miles of underground workings. The | in se depth. | main shaft is 2700 feet deep, is of octagon ‘There are to be seen arms, legs, skulls | shape, perfectly wajled with stone and and other bones at pleasure, or to your| tpirty.two feet acrosst It is said to have | horror, just as you take it. The skulls produced $1,000,000,000, principally in sil- | | piled so high and thrown about in such a disordered way seem to leer at you. The | sensation is peculiar and utterly unlike hing I ever experienced before | “Not many Americans have ever been here, and of those who have, including ome lady tourists, a number have faiated ght. The sight was too much for nerves. { 1t t L ver, and it has employed as many as from | 3000 to 5000 men. It now employs about 1000 men in the upper levels. | “In the lower levels and shafts are 800 feet of water. It is said that at the bot- | tom of the shaft there is thirty feet of rich | ore. All this immense work was accom- | plished by hand—withouta particle of ma- | chinery. It is estimated that it would | He Conquered Death and His here is a potter’s field aside from this | cost $500,000 to erect a pumping plant to as a part of the burying ground already | et this water out and keep it out. told about, and this consists of a trench In | = “There are driveways for miles zigzag- which bodies are buried three deep with- | inz down into the mine to a depth of 1000 out any kind of coffin. | feet. Itis said that at one time an owner “This being a burying-ground managed | of this mine presented several million dol- | by the authorities, the coffins that are | 1ars to the crown of Spain. I was tolq, | used are owned oy the municipality, and i too, that at one time there were in the | | one stone. ADJUTANT W. B. BOYDEN, the Man Who Ate 10,950 Beefsteaks Consecutively, and Gave Back All His Wealth to T | | | | | | hose From Whom He Had Won It. it simply rents the coffins for use till the body is stowed away in the crypt told about awhile ago. The coffins are used over and over, and one of them may have previously had twenty bodiesinit. Ttis kept as any other receptacle wouid be, and is used as long as it will last. Itisthe oddest idea on the part of the municipality of which I ever heard. | “There is another adjunct of this re- markable burying-ground. It is this. At the bottom of the stairs, on both sides of the 300-foot passageway, which is more properly a tunnel, are mumnufied: bodies. They are sealed up in the holes on each side, and they dry up in such a way as to be preserved. “An American down there managed to steal one of these bodies, as he thought it would be quite a curiosity to exhibit. He got the body outin some way and got clear to Guadalajara with it befére he was discovered and brought back. The town of Guanajuato was founaed in 15645, At one time it haa 90,000 inhabi- tants, but nosv it bas 50,000. The others have died and moved away. You can agine the vast number of deaths that xlust have occurred in this ancient town since it was started, and this is the only neighborhood of 4000 arastras at work in the town and that 1600. tons of ore were crushed every twenty-four hours. At present they are crushing about 350 tons of ore a day. “There is an ancient opera-house in the | town that cost $1,000,000. It is stuck away up on the rocks. It is a beantiful building of stone of different colors and has magnificent polished columns. There are a good many bronze statues over ! the columns 1n the front of the building. | All around it are the adobe houses of the | natives. It is a queer sight. “Some of the people are very poor, but | they seem contented and happy. The wages of the peons are from 40 to 75 cents a day in Mexican silver. Silver is Mexi- co's money, and as & country it is very prosperous. Every encouragement is given by the Government to foreigners to establish manufactures, and also to set- tlers. Americans are especially well liked. Many of the goods and supplies are ad- | mitted free of duty and bonuses are given to manufacturers. The soil is rich, Fruits, coffee, cotton, tobacco and other crops are produced in profusion. Im- mense fortunes are being made in coffee | | i i | burying ground they bave. The deceased by Americans and others.” i his diet. | examination, | proceeded to read Boyden his death THE MAN WHO ATE 10,960 BEEFSTEAKS, Remarkable Career of a Most Extraordinary Character. Own Stomach in a Strange Way. Then He Got Religion Suddenly and Gave Away All His Riches. Tt is a cardinal theory of Chinese thera- peutics that all of man's maladies are the work of a devil within him and thatto cure the disease you must destroy the devil. So the Chinese doctor doses the patient with bitter herbs, which, presum- ably at least, cure the malady by driving off the devil, thus killing two birds with This riodus operandi works well enough with the Chinese if we are to | believe what the Chinese doctors tell us. With most of us the devil lurks in the stomach, probably because it is there he can get plenty to eat. more than ordinary nerve to conquer his It takes a man of stomach, but such men exist, though they | are rare, like Mahatmas. Iran acrossone | of them in a San Franciscoboarding-house | along about 1880. His name was Boyden | and he was a remarkable man in his way. | He was apparently old—prematurely so. He was little, lean and weazen, with a long, grayish beard flowing down over | his breastand a pair of small, keen, in- | quiring eyes like those of a terrier. He was as sharp as he looked, and he had to be, for he was a speculator in mining stocks and mines, and only bright men could play that game and keep even, to say nothing about making money. I became interested in him because of beefsteak. This he ate in silence as a rule, for ke was a Spartan in his way and joined but seldom in the gossipcommon to board- ing-house tables. From a neighbor I heard about the beef- steak. Some years before Boyden had fallen into ill health, and after months of physical derangement consulted a physi- cian. The doctor gave him a thorough and after it was finished warrant. “You have got the diabetes,” he said. “[t is incurable, and you are doomed. You may live some years and you may drop off in six months, but the disease is bound to kill you, sooner or later.” This was cheerful. Boyden looked at the doctor with his keen httle gray eyes. | Presently he asked: “Is there nothing I can do to saye my fe?” “Nothing,” answered the doctor; ‘‘but stay; there is one avenue of salvation, and that is not sure by any means. However, as you would not follow it, anyhow, it is immaterial.” “What is that?’ inquired Boyden. *A meat diet. If you have got the self- denial and resolution to eat nothing but well-done -meat for say a matter of ten years or so, you may get well.” “Nothing else?’ asked Boyden. “Nothing else.” “No bread ?” li “No bread, no potatoes, no soup, no ! coffee, tea or whisky, no milk—nothing | but meat, without dressing of any descrip- tion; not even a thimbleful of gravy.” “I’ll do it,” said Boyden, without a mo- ment’s hesitation. And he did. For ten mortal years he adhered without deviation to this diet. Three times a day he ate his piece of meat about the size of his hand, dry as a square of leather. He never had been fat, and now he began to get lean. His face got port he had plenty of money, but when he joined the Salvation Army he gave it all away. It was a great deed. Even his | record of 10,950 beefsteaks in ten years did not eclipse it. He came to the conclusion that as he had made his money in finan- ciering and mining speculation, and as they were sinful, he had no right to that money, and if he kept it he was a robber. So he gave it away. He did not keep a cent. But he did not give it to the Salva- | tion Army. He took it back to the per- | sous from whom he had acquired it and | turned it over to their astonished hands. 1 weazen, his chin developed a bony point, | | his cheeks fell in, his clothes got loose, his chest collapsed, he began to grow bald. | But he stuck to his piece of meat. His | fellow-boarders reveled in smoking soups, | cool salads, pies, puddings, poultry and | game, tea and coffee, but he did not flinch. | | The odor of it floated up into his nostrils, | | but that was all of it he ever got. The in- | terdict did not prohibit smelling, so he H possibly derived some satisfaction from | that, though there must have been alarge- | | sizea teraptation in it. But he went | It re- | then, Gibson had indulgent parents and { all the comtorts that fair fortune brings. ; His parents bought picture-books by the I dozen for him; while poor Emile would £0 into an ecstacy of delight if he could | only behold the splendidly colored pages | of just one of those biz paper-backed books | that are sold for a verv small amount in the stores. Gibson had pictures to | draw from and a governess to instruct | him in the rudiments of art; while Crapu CRAWS PICTURES AT FOUR YEARS OF AGE, The Wonderful Talent Shown by a Folsom- Street Infant. ! Under Unfavorable Circum- | stances He Rivals Gibson's | Earliest Attempts. Draws Fine Locomotives on the Side- | walk and Striking Figures on the Dead Walls. The very latest California discovery in the way of infant prodigies is that of a four-year-old artist, who bids fair some day to rival the Gibsons, the Abbeys and the Vierges in the field of illustration. | The work of the child wonder is the sub- ject of no end of comment in the vicinity | of his home, and predictions as to his future are as numerous as the host of en- thusiastic observers of his efforts, while the fame that is foreseen by all these ready-made critics is of a variety as bright | as the coals that keep the flatirons hot { and as glowing as the polished shirt-fronts | to which the mother of the astonishing youngster has imparted the finishing touches in her little French laundry on Folsom street. Mme. Crapuchette regards her little son | Emile as a valuable assistant in affairs of her household; for, as young as heis, he | is already quite competent to peel the | potatoes, scrape the carrots, snell the peas | and run errands in the neighborhood; but Mme. Crapuchette places no especial value | on the artistic genius displayed by her | precocious heir, In fact, Emile has- often given offense by indulging his habit of scratching odd caricatures gn the white- washed walls, and ruining with his black | pencil-marks much good white paper | which might otherwise be put to use in | sending notiees to forgetful patrons to the | effect that there has been no recent dimin- | ution in the amount of their indebtedness. | And then again, Emile covers the side- walks with chalk fizures that sweeping | does not easily remove and that cause crowds to stop in front of the laundry | door and talk foolishly about Emile being | a *‘natural-born arist.” | | It has been remarked by the proprietress | | of the laundry that those people who halt fand talk so much about the *“‘genius” of | the young Crapuchette never bring much | work to the establishment, and, therefore, | | the madame woulc be quite as well pleased | if they would go along about their busi- mess. The truth is that Emile’s parents do not take much stock in what strangers with " usy tongues call “Emile's gifts.” | | with which some kindly | generous person had supy through the ordeal like a stoie. | quired 1ncredible nerve, but he had it. To add to the misery of it all, even fruit, of which he was passionately fond, was tebooed. This was bard to bear. Heroes | are made of such stuff. | fonsieur Crapuchette, it is very likely, is | looking forward to the day when his son | Emile will be able to do much more than | | clean vegetables and run short errands— | | when that boy shall take his place on the | “It belongs to you, not to me,” he said, “Take it. I can’t keep it and have an ea: conscience.” When he had done this he did not have a penny in the world. “Idon’t care,” he said. “The Lord will i chette must catch in his mind’s eye the picture of the sireetcar as it speeds by or of the railway engine as it rushes across the strest and disappears in the distance that swallows up the noise of the wheels and the sound of bell and whistle. Crapu- chette must be his own tutor and he must copy moving life or nature for his pictures. Gibson had fine paver in plenty, while Emiie must use the public sidewalk in lieu of paper or run the risk of bringing down | the maternal wrath by defacing the walls | which tempt his pencil by their inviting whiteness. Gibson had the aid of indul- gent wealth; Crapuc hette the drawbacks of a denying and discouraging poverty. Why may not Emile Crapuchette some day outshine the fame of Gibson, since the genius of the former is, even in the child of 4, making itself known in spite of con- ditions that put obstructions in his path? 1f Gibson at 8 was gold that called for re- fining, surely Cravuchette at 4 is a dia- mond uncut. Emile may be seen upon almost any sunny afternoon playing about the door of the Jaundry at 1007 Folsom street. He goes bareheaded always and is usually dressed in a check apron and brownie overalls. He isn’t beautiful, but is won- derfully bright. His brilliant brown eyes show keen intelligence. His complexion 1s light, and a rather flat nose mars the regularity of his features. When a CaLL man found him yesterday he was sketching a steam-engine on the sidewalk, and near him was a box of colored erayons interested and i him. “My boy, who showed you how to make the picture of the steam-engine?’ asked the newsgatherer. “‘No one show me,” answered the child, with a decidedly French accent. *‘I see it all the time go by.” Then, while the amused quill-driver looked on, Emile drew the'head of a China- man with brown and yellow chalk, and then made a fac-simile in blue and white of the sign above the laundry door. While the child worked a fuzzy-coated dog sat near him, watching every movement of the hand that moved the chalk, as if the | canine really knew what the picture was intended to pe. The dog, by the way, is Emile’s only street friend. The baby artist has no child eompanions, and when not playing with the do he plays by him- self. The dog’s picture may be found in a number of places on the walls of the in- terior of the laundry, and, it should be added, the pictures beara fair resemblance to each other as well as to the cur. The onlooker made a few marks on the sidewalk. “What Emile. “That is a hand,”” was the explanation. The child laughed with unieigned merri- ment. “That is not hand,” he cried. “‘Here is how to make hand.” And with that he made an excellent outline of a you do?”’ quickly inquired | hand on the boards upon which he was kneelinz. One day a negro stepped into the laun- dry on business, and whiie the ebony- faced man stood by the counter Emile took some cake from the box near the If be had been one of Priam’s soldiers ’ take care of me. Is not the money his, no wooden horse would ever have reduced | and the cattle upon a thousand hilis? @3"“"“2 SBrC Sud T e o> ™™ | stove, broke it into powder with the end rumming up custom for the laundry. | o5 4 fiatiron and worked it around on the Whai a disappointment there will be | fioor with his fingers until he had pro- Troy as long as he was within its walls. Does not everything in the world belons He was as grim as a ghost over it, too, and | 0 bim? Why, then, should I keep other well he might be, foritwasno joke. I | people’s money?” never saw him smile nor keard him laugh, | As faras I know he never lacked a good and I doubt if anybody else ever did. bed and all he wanted to eat. He was far | When such a man starts out to do any- | hapvier without his money than with it. | thing he generally does it if it is in the | | To be a Salvation soldier was his life, and cards. Boyden conquered the diabetes, | 1€ Was & good one. | In ten years he was well and could eat the money, however it may appear to the | His act of returning icecream, and cucumbers, and welsh rab- | 3Verage man, filled his fellow Salvation- | bit, and chocolate creams, and crab salad, | 15t With admiration. He was a man after and anything else he chose. But he for- their own hearts. When he got rather too | bore. He knew when he was well off and | ©ld to tramp the cobbles and dodge stones, | he let such things alone, He knew that | theY gave himan easy billet as guarter- | meat was his salvation and he stuck to it, | aster in charge of the army’s supply de- with occasional relaxations in the way of | POt in Oakland. Here he remained for stale bread or a plain soup. | some years, a most faithful officer. Inever 2 Rt i AEp L Every now and then some inspired idiot | $2%: 21 out of uniform, and I don’t be makes a bet that he can eat a quail at | lieve he bad any other clothes. He cer- | every meal for a month or two, and heosk | tainly had none that became him better. ways loses it. In about a fortnight his | ..o i00ked every inch a foldier in his red | stomach, aided by his imagination, re- Shll"' helth;md {l:xhssmn C“; e 3 volts, and when the quail is set before him | 3¢ ‘s‘aw 7 s fe 8"(;'3’ & qna}r{ershos he turns green. But I am firmly con- | Lorket street a few days ago. He ha | grown about twenty vears younger and vinced that Boyden could have eaten a quail three times a day for a year; for as far as fighting his stomach was concerned was actually fat, with an eye like an eagle. “The Lord cured me,” he said, with his when Emiie, having grown old enough to | drive the cart and solicit patronage, straightway washes his hands of the occu- | vation by which his parents gained a live- | lihood. And then, how he will surprise | those parents when he is earning handfuls of gold money by making pictures for the newspapers and the magazines. Homer | Davenport's parents up in Oregon didn’t | think much of his artistic talent when he was merging into his "teens. His father even declarea that all Homer was good for was to draw ‘“‘fool pictures.” | Now Homer draws a salary that amounts | to more in a week than bis father makes in a month, and all on account of the knack of making “fool pictures.” Old | Mr. Davenport probably thought that Homer might make an average ranch- | hand if he could overcome a certain tired feeling that he exhibited very young. The | old man is still farming. There isn’t any profit to boast of in wheat-raising, but Homer is just making money hand over fist making ‘‘fool pictures.” And, without | doubt, the case of Emile Crapuchette will | duced a profile study of a negro’s head. Some of the neighbors saw the achieve- ment and showered praises on Emile, but as soon as Mme. Crapuchette was disen- gaged from some business that had re- quired her undivided attention she grabbed a broom and dustpan, and, after sweeping away the negro vprofile of black dust, cuffed Emile’s ears and warned him never to be caught in the act of soiling the floor like that again. Thus is genius hampered at 1007 Folsom street. If Emile Crapuchette attracts attention and wins applause at 4, what will he not be, in the world of art, if he perseveres and progresses until he is 20? If ever there was a ‘born artist” there is one surely in the California-born child of French parents, whose very poyerty has been the means of converting the sidewalk into a drawing-table, making a studio of the street”with sky for ceiling, and thus attracting the attention of thousands, among whom some patron may yet be found who will use money and influenca to the end that Emile Crapuchette may | nose at the same time for ten years and Hesat opposite me at table and | his zole article of food was a dry chip of | brown hands on his hips, looking squarely at me with the glare of a warrior. ‘‘It pays me to serve.the Lord. If I hadn’t got salvation I would have been dead years ago,”” And he probably would. He has lately been promoted, and is now Adjutant W. B. Boyden. The Salvation- ists call him “Father” Boyden, and re- gard him with genuine respect. he was a man among men. His like will probably never be seen again this cen- tury. Any man can tight another man; it is no trick at all to be a soldier. But a | man who can fight his stomach and his beat them both is monumental. I would like to inscribe his virtue in this respect be somewhat similar, with reference to the | have such educational advantages as his unfulfiiled paternal anticipations. | peculiar natural bent demands. Charles Dana Gibson gave earnest of his J e e future célebrity when as a child of 8 he | The average weight of the brain in scissored out of paper the figures of man | various nationalities appears from the in< and bird and beast with a degree of per- | teresting researches of Bernard Davis to fection that was the marvel ofall who wit- | be as follows: Englishmen 47.50 ounces, nessed the work of his tiny hands. But, | Frenchmen 44.50, and Germans 42.83. on polished marble, but I can’t afford it. Of course, it was impossible that such a man should be like other men. One day he was walking along the street—Mason street, I believe—thinking of politics or stocks, or some such commonplace mat- ter, when, without a word of warning— without the slightest premonitory symp- tom—the grace of God swooped down upon him like an eagle and converted him to Christ on the spot. So he told me in his simple, unaffected way. “It came upon me like a bolt from | heaven,”” he said. ‘It was a revelation, sudden, like an electric shock. I was walk- ing along, a sinner. The next second I was a Christian. It was done for me—I had no hand in it—in the twinkling of an eye. It was the grace of God flooding my heart. Then and there I became converted.” No half-way measures satisfied Boyden. The ordinary man requires a redhot re- vival to bring him to his spiritual senses, but Boyden landed there with both feet in his own unique way. Having become con- | verted he made a bee-line for the Salvation Army barracks and enlisted on the spot. I was going down to Tie CALL office one raw evening when the first squad of Salva- tion soldiers I had ever seen came poking along up Sacramento street in the fog. | There were only six of them. They paused in front of the What Cheer House to fire a volley and sing one of their old-time hallelujah hymns, and I stopped to look on. Five of them were ruddy-faced, Saxon- haired young Englishmen with drum, tambourine, and triangle. Before them marched a lean, little old man with a long beard, carrying a transparency announc- !ing that the whole town was invited to at- tend a meeting of the Salvation Army at | headquarters that evening. It was i Boyden. I There he was in his red shirt and beit with his Russian cap, red-banded and con- spicuous, charged to the muszzle with Sal- vation zeal. He could not sing and he was too old to shout, but he carried his transparency with a great, overflowing pride wonderful to contemplate. No trifles like these could intimidate 8 man who had eaten 10,950 beefsteaks one after an- other with nothing in between. This remarkable man did another pe- culiar thing, According to common re- 3 ShET AR ~ ‘ Strange Receptacle for Human Bones in a Mountainside Crypt at Guanajuato, Mexico.