AN

ADDRESS

DELIVERED

IN THE CITY OF CARACAS,

ON THE 26th FEBRUARY, 1834,

AT THE

CONSECRATION OF A CHAPEL AND BURIAL

GROUND,

FOR THE INTERMENT

OF THE MEMBERS OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH

DYING WITHIN THAT CITY.

THE following extract from a letter addressed to the Bishop by Sir Robert Kerr Porter, his Majesty's Consul at the city of Caracas, will explain the occasion of the following Address :—

"According to the existing Treaty of Amity, and under the auspices of the British Government, as well as by its pecuniary aid, in addition to the subscriptions obtained from his Majesty's subjects resident in Caracas and La Guayra, the long wanted establishment of a Protestant Cemetery in this city has at length been accomplished, and in a manner, I trust, highly honorable to the Nation, whose name it bears, as also creditable to those, through whose exertions and means it owes its foundation. All now wanting to render our object most sacredly respected by the Natives, and to silence any scrupulous feelings that may exist in the breasts of my fellow Countrymen here (who are, indeed, but few) regarding its present unhallowed state, is its consecration. If, therefore, during the course of some one of your episcopal visitations throughout the Islands, it were possible, without great inconvenience, to extend your presence to this Capital, and hallow our place of interment, the pious act, can assure you, would be gratefully appreciated by us all, as likewise by every Protestant and Stranger within its walls. I have already consulted this Government on the subject in question, and received complete. assurance that the act of consecration is in strict agreement with the spirit of our treaty, besides having the full approbation and sanction of the Executive of the Republic."

On the 27th of January last the Bishop sailed from the island of Barbados in his Majesty's ship Forte, under the command of Commodore Pell, on a visitation to the northern part of the diocese; and, after officially visiting the islands of Montserrat, Antigua. Nevis, Saint Christopher, and Tortola, passed on to the Danish islands of Saint Thomas, and Santa Cruz, (where there are many English Residents,) and stretching from the latter island across

the Caribbean Sea, anchored in the road of La Guayra on the 22d of February'. The Bishop on the evening of that day proceeded across the mountains to the city of Caracas. On the 24th the Bishop was honoured with a special audience by the President of Venezuela, Joze Antonio Paez, General in Chief, &c.; and on the 26th, in the presence of his excellency General Paez, the Chief Ministers of the Republic, his Majesty's Consul, the Commodore and Officers of his Majesty's ship, the British residents, and a large concourse of the Inhabitants of the City, the Bishop consecrated the chapel and burial ground according to the rites and ceremonies of the United Church of England and Ireland. The petition, with the deed of purchase, was presented by Sir Robert Kerr Porter, and read by his Secretary. His Excellency Lieut.-Colonel Stopford, Governor of Cumana, acted as Chancellor; and the Rev. Richard Hurrel Froude, M.A. of Oriel College, Oxford, and the Rev. Joseph Marshall, B.A. of Trinity College, Dublin, Chaplain of his Majesty's ship Forte, officiated as the Bishop's chaplains.

The burial ground is situated in the suburbs of the City to the south-west, and is enclosed by a high and neat wall: within, it is divided into two squares, and is terminated at the southern end by a deep recess of sufficient dimensions to serve as a chapel, and with a chastely-executed pediment and columns, of considerable height.

Amidst a sublimity and richness of landscape almost unequalled in the world, which presents itself to the view of the astonished traveller on looking down from the mountain-pass on the city of Caracas (splendid still even in its ruins 2;) and along its length

1 By a singular coincidence the Act for Religious Toleration passed the Congress a few days only before the Bishop's arrival.

2 The City of Caracas was almost totally destroyed by a dreadful earthquake in 1812. Nearly 20,000 persons are supposed to have perished either from the openings of the earth or from the fall of buildings. It happened on Holy Thursday; and in the Barrack alone (which must have been both in itself and from its situation a most striking edifice) 2000 soldiers, who were under arms waiting to attend a public procession, were in an instant buried. The loss of

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ened line of fertile plain, irrigated by the river Guayra, and stretching in an easterly and westerly direction for more than twenty miles, at an elevation of nearly 3000 feet above the level of the sea, with a range of mountains on either side, rising in one point to more than 5000 feet above the plain itself—the eye yet rests with calm and holy delight on the conspicuous, but neat and simple, burial ground of the English Church.

of life in the monastic houses was very great, and the circumstances under which several of the nuns perished, most harrowing. In one street a priest was observed, with a crowd of affrighted females clinging to his garments, and in a moment a wall was seen to fall and crush them all under it. The inconvenience arising from the dead bodies left unburied was so great, that the city itself was deserted by the survivors for some months. Of the many churches which graced the City, three or four only, with the Cathedral, were left standing, and these were much shaken and injured.