ITS ENVIRONS. 



31 



sent by the first monk of our wish to see the pre- 

 mises, had returned an answer that he was occupied 

 and could not come. We now went up to the granary, 

 and found him employed in taking an account of a 

 quantity of wheat w^hich some men were conveying from 

 one part of the granary to another. Don Peres, my 

 companion, expressed to him my wish to see every thing 

 that was to be seen, and particularly the oil presses. 

 " Ah," he replied, " the English are a very ingenious 

 people ; but they already know every thing sufficiently 

 well, and do not need to be instructed." He therefore 

 saw us w^alking about the granary without stirring from 

 his seat, or offering a single observation, and he seemed 

 very well pleased when we took our leave. The granary 

 contained a considerable quantity of very fair wheat, also 

 some Indian corn and millet. I looked in vain to dis- 

 cover a single weevil, and found that this insect, which 

 occasions such ravages with us, was only known here by 

 name. As we proceeded to Italica w'e found a large 

 number of people shelling maize— the greater part 

 belonging to the monks, who are the proprietors and 

 farmers of most of the land surrounding their convent. 

 Their mode of shelling was to take a blunt iron instru- 

 ment (most of them used the back of a reaping hook, or 

 the instrument with wdiich they clean their ploughs), 

 and holding the cob in their left hand, wnth the thick 

 end up, continue striking it till all the corn is off. Each 

 stroke stripped the cob from top to bottom of the place 

 where it was struck. I put the question to several, 

 and they said that one person would thus shell from 4 

 to 5 fanegas, that is, about from eight to ten bushels in 

 a day, and that they received a rial for each fanega ; that 

 is, from the 4th to the 5th of a dollar per day ; but they 



