that is to say, chastity and obedience,
exacts that the vow of poverty shall be observed more scrupulously than
the other mendicants enforce it. Their dress should be of coarse cloth,
and of a color to which they have given a name [monk's gray]; their
girdles, or cordons, of rope, and their shirts of wool, if they can
bear them. They are to go without stockings; and, finally, it is not
lawful for them to use shoes, but to wear sandals. Not only are they
prohibited having money, but they ought not even to touch it; neither
to possess any thing as their own. In their journeys it is forbidden
them to mount a horse, although they should fall by the way from
fatigue. It is necessary that they should go afoot with sorrow and
fatigue; esteeming the infraction of any of these precepts a mortal
sin, which merits excommunication and hell. But they neglect all the
obligations which the rigorous observance of these rules imposes upon
them--to the neglect of all discipline, and to the disregard of the
penalties. Those that have been transported to this country live in a
manner which does not in any thing show that they have made a vow to
God of even trifling privations. Their lives are so free and immodest
that it might be suspected, with reason, that they had renounced only
that which they could not, or were unable to attain.

MONKISH GAMBLING.

"We were surprised and even scandalized at the extraordinary sight of a
San Franciscan of Jalapa, riding most beautiful mule, with a groom, or
rather lackey, behind him, while only going to the end of the village
to confess a sick man. His reverence, as he went along, had his
garments tucked up from beneath, which exhibited a stocking of
orange-color; a shoe of the most exquisite morocco; small clothes of
Holland linen; with knots and braids of four fingers in width. Such a
spectacle made us observe with more attention the conduct of that
friar, and that of others beneath whose broad sleeves were exhibited a
jacket embroidered with silk. They also wore shirts of Holland; and
hand-ruffs inclosed their hands. But we did not discover, either in
their garments or in their table, any thing that indicated
mortification; on the contrary, every thing exhibited the same vanity
which was noted in the people of the world.

[Illustration: GAMBLING IN A CONVENT.]

"After supper some of them began to speak of cards and dice, and they
invited us to play, in order to contribute to the entertainment o