Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/206

Rh "The pleasantest place," says he, "of all that are about Mexico, is called La Soledad, and by others El Desierto—the Solitary, or Desert place. Were all wildernesses like it, to live in a wilderness would be better than to live in a city! This hath been a device of poor Fryers named discalced, or barefooted Carmelites, who, to make show of their apparent godliness, and that while they may be thought to live like Eremites, retired from the world, they may draw the world unto them, they have built there a stately cloister, which being upon a hill and among rocks makes it more to be admired. About the cloister they have fashioned out many holes and caves, in, under, and among the rocks, like Eremites' lodgings, with a room to lie in, and an oratory to pray in, with pictures and images, and rare devices for mortifications, as disciplines of wire, rods of iron, hair cloths, girdles with sharp wire points to girdle about their bare flesh, and many such like toys which hang about their oratories, to make people admire their mortified and holy lives.

"All the eremitical holes and caves (which are some ten in all) are within the bounds and compass of the cloister and among gardens and orchards full of fruits and flowers, which may take up two miles' compass; and here among the rocks are many springs of water, which, with the shade of the plantains and other trees, are most cool and pleasant to the Eremites; they have, also, the sweet smell of the rose and jasmine, which is a little flower, but the sweetest of all others; there is not any other flower to be found that is rare and exquisite in that country which is not in that wilderness, to delight the senses of those mortified Eremites!

"They are weekly changed from the cloister; and when the week is ended, others are sent, and they return unto their cloister; they carry with them their bottles of wine, sweetmeats, and other provision; as for fruits, the trees about to drop them into their mouths.

"It is wonderful to see the strange devices of fountains of water which are about the gardens; but much more wonderful to see the resort of coaches, and gallants, and ladies, and citizens from Mexico thither, to walk and make merry in those desert pleasures, and to see those hypocrites whom they look upon as living saints, and to think nothing too good for them to cherish them in their desert conflicts with Satan. No one goes to them but carries some sweetmeats or other dainty dish, to nourish and feed them withal; whose prayers they likewise earnestly solicit, leaving them great alms of money for their masses; and above all, offering to a picture in their church, called "O," treasures of diamonds, pearls, golden chains, and crowns, and gowns of cloth of gold and silver.

"Before this picture did hang, in my time, twenty lamps of silver; the worst of them being worth a hundred pounds."

Of all these cool retreats—these quiet haunts for monkish mortification—the abodes, at once, of humility and pride—nothing now remains but heaps of ruins, marking the former cloisters and hermitages. But time has been unable to destroy the magnificent prospect that bursts upon the