At last dwelling-houses came in sight, white-washed granite cottages roofed with red tiles; they were nearly square, with about four rooms to each. The road now descended rapidly, and we passed to our right a picturesque dell surrounded on three sides by a noisy waterfall, in which stood an old monastery and its church, _San Justo de los Tojosutos_, so named because the slope upon which the dell is situated is covered with tall furze (tojo). The little church, whose spire rises up to a level with the sides of the dell, dates from the twelfth century. We could see part of the beautiful arcade of the ruined cloister from the coach as we passed. No monks have lived there since its monastic inmates were turned out, but I was told that this little cloister was once used as a place of banishment for monks of Osera who had broken the monastic rules. The modern building adjoining is the house of the village priest. All the pasture land on the hills round the dell and the two neighbouring valleys, right down to the bank of the Tambre, once belonged to the monks, and they had a right to all the fish caught in that part of the river, which, by the way, was particularly rich in lampreys. People say that the kindness and generosity of the monks towards the poor did much to encourage idleness and increase the number of paupers. We were at last nearing Noya; women were at work in the fields; they wore very short skirts, hardly below the knees, and wide-brimmed yellow straw hats with a band of black ribbon round the low crown; the men also wore this kind of hat, the manufacture of which is the special industry of one of the Noya villages. A young peasant woman met us as she was leading her oxen home. She was as upright as a young pine; perhaps her queenly bearing was a result of carrying burdens on her head, and certainly Gallegan women do hold themselves remarkably well. At a bend in the road we caught sight of the sea for a moment in the direction of Cape Finisterre. The scenery remained beautiful and rugged till we had reached the bottom of the wide valley in which Noya lies. In front of one of the cottages we saw a quaint sight,--a cottager was mounted on a ladder with a mortar trowel in his hand doing something to the roof, while beneath him, motionless as a statue, stood a tall woman supporting on her broad-brimmed hat the board from which the man helped himself to mortar. Here was another use to which the head of a Gallegan woman could be put. The coach drew up in a sort of village green, near a fountain, and in front was the public walk, or Alameda. The first thing that attracts a stranger’s attention is a bust of Noya’s [Illustration: NOYA PHOTO. BY AUTHOR] famous sculptor, Filipe de Castro,[238] which is placed on the top of a tall pedestal and forms a sort of landmark for visitors. The houses of Noya are built of granite; I noticed that some of them had not only tiled roofs but also tiled walls. “To keep the wet out,” I was told.