, to live in a wilderness would be better than to
live in a city. This hath been a device of bare-footed Carmelites, to
make show of their apparent godliness, and who would be thought to live
like hermits, retired from the world, that they may draw the world unto
them. They have built them a stately cloister, which, being upon a hill
and among rocks, makes it to be most admired. About the cloister they
have fashioned out many holes and caves, in, under, and among the
rocks, like hermits' lodgings, with a room to lie in, and an oratory
to pray in, with pictures, and images, and rare devices for
self-mortification, as scourges of wire, rods of iron, haircloth
girdles with sharp wire points, to gird about their bare flesh, and
many such like toys, which hang about their oratories, to make people
admire their mortified and holy lives.

"All these hermits' holes and caves, which are some ten in all, are
within the bounds and compass of the cloister, and among orchards and
gardens, which are full of fruits and flowers, which may take two miles
in compass; and here among the rocks are many springs of water, which,
with the shade of the plantain and other trees, are most cool and
pleasant to the hermits. They have also the sweet smell of the rose and
the jessamine, which is a little flower, but the sweetest of all
others; and there is not any 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 hermits.

"They are weekly changed from the cloister, and when their week is
ended others are sent, and they return into their cloisters; they carry
with them their bottles of wine, sweetmeats, and other provisions. As
for fruits, the trees do 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 strange and wonderful to see the resort thither
of coaches, and gallants, and ladies, and citizens from Mexico, to walk
and make merry in those desert pleasures, and to see those hypocrites,
whom they look upon as living saints, and so think nothing too good for
them to cherish them in their desert conflicts with Satan.

"None goes to them but carries some sweetmeats or some 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, calle