ELDESIERTO. 159 
" The pleasantest place," says he, " of all that are about Mexico, is 
called La Soledad, and by others El Desierto — the Solitary, or Desert, 
place. Were all wildernesses like it, to live in a wilderness would be 
better than to live in a city ! This hath been a device of poor Fryers 
named discalced, or barefooted Carmelites, who, to make show of their 
apparent godliness, and that while they may be thought to live like 
Eremites, retired from the world, they may draw the world unto them, 
they have built there a stately cloister, which being upon a hill and 
among rocks makes it more to be admired. About the cloister they have 
fashioned out many holes and caves, in, under, and among the rocks, like 
Eremites' lodgings, with a room to lie in, and an oratory to pray in, with 
pictures and images, and rare devices for mortifications, as disciplines of 
wire, rods of iron, hair cloths, girdles with sharp wire points to girdle 
about their bare flesh, and many such like toys which hang about their 
oratories, to make people admire their mortified and holy lives. 
" All the eremitical holes and caves (which are some ten in all) are 
within the bounds and compass of the cloister and among gardens and 
orchards full of fruits and flowers, which may take up two miles' compass ; 
and here among the rocks are many springs of water, which, with the 
shade of the plantains and other trees, are most cool and pleasant to the 
Eremites ; they have, also, the sweet smell of the rose and jasmine, which 
is a little flower, but the sweetest of all others ; there is not any other 
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 Eremites ! 
" They are weekly changed from the cloister ; and when the week is 
ended, others are sent, and they return unto their cloister ; they carry 
with them their bottles of wine, sweetmeats, and other provision; as for 
fruits, the trees about 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 wonderful to see the resort of 
coaches, and gallants, and ladies,, and citizens from Mexico thither, to 
walk and make merry in those desert pleasures, and to see those hypo- 
crites whom they look upon as living saints, and to think nothing too 
good for them to cherish them in their desert conflicts with Satan. No 
one goes to them but carries some sweetmeats or 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, called " Our Lady of Cakmel," 
treasures of diamonds, pearls, golden chains, and crowns, and gowns of 
cloth of gold and silver. 
"Before this picture did hang, in my time, twenty lamps of silver; the 
worst of them being worth a hundred pounds." 
Of all these cool retreats — these quiet haunts for monkish mortification 
— the abodes, at once, of humility and pride — nothing now remains but 
heaps of ruins, marking the former cloisters and hermitages. But time 
has been unable to destroy the magnificent prospect that bursts upon the 
