The Suez canal was still in course of construction in 1529, but was never finished,[284] and no term was set on the advance of the Portuguese. In 1541 Dom John (João) de Castro, who bore the proud title of viceroy of India, sailed up the Red Sea with a fleet, intending to attack Suez, but when he espied the fort and the ships at anchor there, he turned back. In sailing up the Gulf of Suez, and again in sailing down, Dom John stopped at Tur, where he communed with a monk of Sinai, who told him that the convent was occupied by monks of the order of Montserrat (_sic_), and that the body of St. Katherine had been removed to Cairo. Another informant denied all knowledge of this fact. Dom John was a man of some pretensions, who identified Suez as Heroöpolis, and Tur as Aelana of classic times. His observations were laid down in a _Description of the Lands bordering on the Red Sea_, which Sir Walter Raleigh considered of such importance, that he had it translated into English.[285] Throughout this period we hear little of pilgrims and of the convent. The spirit of the Reformation was abroad, and the thought of St. Katherine was losing its hold on the imagination of Europe. Gregor, prior of the Carthusian house at Gaming, who came to the convent in 1507 together with Martin Baumgarten, stated that the monks were miserable owing to the clamorous Arabs, who occupied the mosque and kept their festival on the Mount of the Law as already related. In the estimation of Gregor, the monks of Sinai professed the order of St. Basil, but, he declared, they would be glad to be taken under the protection of Rome (p. 498). About the year 1546 the learned Belon of Mans, who travelled in the interest of science and archæology, visited Sinai, which he mentioned in his _Observations de certaines singularités_, etc., a work that reflects the spirit of the new age. Belon remarked on the Franciscan settlement at Gaza, the arsenal at Suez, and the canal of thirty miles’ length. In the convent he found about sixty monks.[286]