The body of St. Francis Xavier is in a magnificently carved silver sarcophagus placed on a splendid base of black marble. On the sarcophagus are beautifully cast alto-relievi, representing the various acts of his life and death, all surmounted by a gold and silver top. The actual body of the saint is inside, in a gold shell, and is shown to the people once in a century on the 3rd of December. The last time was in 1878; the body was found in its normal state of freshness. There is a real old portrait of him in oils outside his chapel, done in 1552. A print found in rags in a convent dusthole is so like it, that I put it together, brought it home, and had it copied. We used always to leave our vehicle here, and have the pony taken out and fed, watered, and rested, whilst we scrambled all the day over the hills, looking at the different remnants of Churches and Monasteries. The site of the once so-called "Holy Office" is on the right hand of the Cathedral and the Archbishop's Palace, a heap of ruins, covered with luxuriant growth, and poisonous plants and thorns; not one stone left upon another; not a wholesome shrub springs between the fragments of masonry which, broken and blackened with decay, are left to encumber the soil, as unworthy of being removed, or contaminating another building with their curse. You must not think we walked through comfortable paved streets to these different buildings, of which I only mention two, but there were dozens. We scrambled through woods, over hill and dale, and the distances tell us how large Goa must have been, especially ascending a stony Scala Santa through briars and brambles to the place where the victims used to be scourged. There was the chapel where Xavier first started a school and a chapel for converting and preaching, where he used to educate children; and hard by was the well where he took his morning bath. It is like the Arab's "City with impenetrable gates, still, without a voice or cheery inhabitant; the owl hooting in its quarters, and night-birds skimming in circles in its ruins, and the raven croaking in its great thoroughfare-streets, as if bewailing those that had been in it." How thirsty we used to be! But at the sight of a bit of silver, boys would climb the trees like monkeys, pick off cocoanuts, chop off the little round piece at the top, and hand them to us to drink. How beautifully white the inside of the nut; how refreshing the milk, clean and cold as ice! Each nut containing enough to quench the greatest thirst, leaving a refreshing coolness in the mouth, throat, and interior. In a dry, parched, thirsty land without water, there is drink for you at the top of the trees that shade you--harmless drink, iced by nature.