Almost facing the apse of this church is an interesting old house which is supposed to date from the end of the fifteenth or beginning of the sixteenth century; its first floor rests upon a porch, or rather a colonnade, with four Gothic arches; the windows are very small, and the walls massive. This house is thought to have belonged to one of Noya’s wealthy merchant families; part of it is now used as an hotel; the balcony is modern. There are several other houses in Noya that are very similar to this one, and equally old, for Noya too had her own nobility and her days of splendour. The house opposite the façade of San Martin is an old one, and behind it are to be seen the ruins of what was formerly the summer residence of the archbishops of Santiago; there still remains a wall with a Gothic window, and a little while ago there was an arch still standing. In this courtyard a rebel was publicly executed by order of the archbishop, in the fourteenth century. Many parts of the old wall which surrounded the town in medieval days are still standing; the fisherwomen mend their nets upon it. At one time the water of the ria washed against its many gates, but now it does not come farther than the bridge with six arches. Ships and small boats float up towards the town with the tide, and are left stranded at low water. A little way up the river Trava, which skirts the southern side of the town, is a picturesque flour mill, on the road to which stands the quaint little hospital with the Noya arms above its entrance. The Franciscan monastery, already partially in ruins, is now used as the town prison. I went up its broad old stairs, walked round its cloister to admire its graceful arcades (later Gothic), and saw, in what had been perhaps the refectory or the library of the monks, one solitary prisoner; the floors were composed of rotting rafters that threatened to give way as we walked, though I was assured by the gentleman who acted as my guide, that they were entirely of chestnut wood, and very strong. The windows looked out on a beautiful garden shut in on three sides by verdant hills. The Noya magistrate, when I was speaking about the prison, informed me that there were only seventy cases of crime in Noya in the whole of the preceding year, and none of them grave. “The man you saw in the prison,” he added, “is of feeble mind, and as soon as room in an asylum can be found he is to be removed thither.” Near the monastery there is a fine old family mansion belonging to the Varela family, containing some quaint furniture, pictures, and clocks; it stands in a beautiful garden with fountains and arbours, and is full of flowering trees, giant magnolias with spreading branches, and camellias of every colour; I saw there many semi-tropical shrubs of which I did not know the names.