and cools the town. There is no doubt that this advantage was not foreseen. Might it not be usefully imitated in all hot countries?
The inhabitants used to say, that wine when drank fresh from these cellars never intoxicated. The reason they assigned was, that it was so cold as to compress the vapours in the stomach, which were thus tempered when they ascended to the brain, instead of being in a burning state. The weakness of the wine is a more obvious solution than the excellence of the cellar; though, undoubtedly, hot liquors intoxicate sooner than cold.
This account of Montalvan is as it was two centuries ago; but things have undergone so little alteration in Spain, that it probably may still be accurate.
Burnet, (the Bishop) describes something of the same kind at Chavennes. The town stands at the very foot of the mountains. "At the roots of the moun-
