232 friar's apartment. 



of dirty monastical dresses hung on pegs^ 

 giving the room much the air of a Jew's 

 clothes shop. The kitchen was as void of 

 every comfort and requisite as the sitting- 

 room : a charcoal fire, a copper chocolate 

 pot, an earthen oUa and platilla for frying 

 eggs, comprised the cooking apparatus ; and 

 a couple of sheep's skins, with a tatter- 

 ed roana, in one corner, formed a bed for 

 the servant. Such is the real style in 

 which this venerable looking old friar lived ; 

 and from every information I could obtain, 

 few are more comfortable than himself. 

 It is really curious to find so many persons 

 induced to enter for life into so wretched 

 a state, where they debar themselves of 

 almost every real comfort, and strive to 

 make the existence of the rest of mankind 

 as irksome as their own, by extraordinary 

 penitences and troublesome outward show 

 and form. We conversed over the present 

 state of Colombia, and he said, " Ah! 



