Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 August 1879 — An American Girl’s Adventure in the Catacombs of Paris. [ARTICLE]

An American Girl’s Adventure in the Catacombs of Paris.

Miss Bessie Darling, an American actress, has had a serious and almost fatal adventure in the catacombs of Paris. These catacombs contain, in numberless galleries, extending under nearly half of the city, the bones of nearly 3,000,000 of people* On each side of these weird avenues, from the floor to the ceiling, are piled bones and skulls. The bones of the arms, legs and thighs are piled in tiers along the walls, their uniformity being relieved by three rows of skulls and croes-boues arranged In fantastic patterns, and at intervals, cut out of the gypsum of the cavernk underlying Paris, are little chapels or altars. At 10 o’clock one morning a few weeks ago Miss Darling, who was one of a party of thirty, descended the steep staircase of ninety steps leading to the catacombs, and preceded by guides entered the galleries. whose tortuous winding and. ramifications have all the perplexities of a labyrinth. Miss Darling, with tbe independence of an American girl, quitted her party and set out to explore underground horrors alone. Among so many sbewas not missed. A little of this sight-seeing satisfied her companions, and they returned to the light and to their dinners. In the meantime Miss Darling was hurrying through one gallery after another. Unfortunately she had not provided herself with a supply of candles, and when the one she carried was burned out she was left in utter darkness, and she began to realize the horrors of her situation.- It was then, so the story runs, that “she did what every other woman would have done in similar circumstances—she fainted away." How tong she remained insensible she does not know; but when she came to herself she made throughout the remainder of the day and through the night the galleries echo with her shriek for Kelp. Fortunately, at 10 o’clock the next morning a workman, while passingjtlong a neighboring gallery, heard her cries and hurried to the rescue. He found her in one of those galleries that have no thoroughfare and are simply side passages, and two yards from the spot where he encountered her was the mouth of an exhausting shaft, down which she had only escaped falling by tbe suddenness with which she had fainted, and the pertinacity with which she remained on the spot where she fell. When at the end of eighteen hours she* was brought to the light she fainted again. But “all’s well that ends well,” although for a short time her situation appeared to be- critical. There is a moral in this story, which behooves adventurous young women to heed. In foreign travel, whether among the Alps or the Roman and French catacombs, or in strange cities where the more dangerous classes abound, too much independence ot companionship is perilous, apart from the conventionalism abroad, which looks askance at a young woman wandering about alone. ‘ *