Page:The Strange Voyage and Adventures of Domingo Gonsales, to the World in the Moon.djvu/46

40  Granata. Also Joseph Defia de Carana, in his History of Mexico, if my Memory fail not, recount what will make my Report more creditable; but I value not Testimonies.

If you enquire how Justice is executed, alas, what need is there of examplary Punishment where no Offences are committed; neither need they any Lawyers, for there is no Contention, the Seeds whereof, when they begin to sprout, are by the Wisdom of the next Superior pluckt up by the Roots. And as little Want is there of Physicians, they never surfeit themselves; the Air is always pure and temperate, neither is there any Cause of Sickness, I could never hear of any that were distempered. But the Time assigned them by Nature being spent, they die without the lead Pain, or rather cease to live, as a Candle does to give Light when what nourishes it is consumed. I was once at the Departure of one of them, and was much surprized, that notwithstanding the happy Life he lived, and the Multitude of Friends and Children he should forsake, yet as soon as he understood his End to approach, he prepared a great Feast, and inviting all whom “he esteemed, exhorts them, to be merry and rejoice with him, since the Time was come he should now leave the counterfeit Pleasures of that World, and be made Partaker of all true Joy and perfect Happiness.” I did not so much admire his own Constancy, as the Behaviour of his Friends: With us in the like Case all seem to mourn, when many of them do oft but laugh in their Sleeves, or under a Vizard. But here all both Young and Old did, in my Conscience, not pretendedly, but really rejoice thereat, and if any dissembled, it was only Grief for their own particular Loss. Being dead their Bodies putrify not, and so are not buried, but kept in certain Rh