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,