Forty-four shipwrecked men and women lay here at one time, awaiting
burial. Here, with weeping and wailing in every room of his house,
my companion worked alone for hours, solemnly surrounded by eyes
that could not see him, and by lips that could not speak to him,
patiently examining the tattered clothing, cutting off buttons,
hair, marks from linen, anything that might lead to subsequent
identification, studying faces, looking for a scar, a bent finger,
a crooked toe, comparing letters sent to him with the ruin about
him. 'My dearest brother had bright grey eyes and a pleasant
smile,' one sister wrote. O poor sister! well for you to be far
from here, and keep that as your last remembrance of him!

The ladies of the clergyman's family, his wife and two sisters-in-
law, came in among the bodies often. It grew to be the business of
their lives to do so. Any new arrival of a bereaved woman would
stimulate their pity to compare the description brought, with the
dread realities. Sometimes, they would go back able to say, 'I
have found him,' or, 'I think she lies there.' Perhaps, the
mourner, unable to bear the sight of all that lay in the church,
would be led in blindfold. Conducted to the spot with many
compassionate words, and encouraged to look, she would say, with a
piercing cry, 'This is my boy!' and drop insensible on the
insensible figure.

He soon observed that in some cases of women, the identification of
persons, though complete, was quite at variance with the marks upon
the linen; this led him to notice that even the marks upon the
linen were sometimes inconsistent with one another; and thus he
came to understand that they had dressed in great haste and
agitation, and that their clothes had become mixed together. The