216 
LETTERS FROM 
rior was as acid as the pulp of a common 
lemon. 
After we had spent an hour very pleasantly 
in this curious garden, our guide invited us 
into his convent, and showed us the burying- 
place of the monks. It was a large vault 
under the church, lighted by windows from 
above. On entering the monk gave us each 
a pinch of snuff, I suppose for the purpose of 
correcting any bad smell, but my nose could 
detect nothing very offensive. But the 
place was full of flies, both alive and dead. 
The bodies are first subjected to a drying 
and preservative process, I believe by being 
kept in lime for some months, after which 
they are set upright in open recesses in the 
walls, and an assemblage of ghastly grinning 
old fellows they are. One of these mummies 
had been in the vault one hundred and 
thirty years, and another only six months; 
