The convent of Santa Clara is surrounded by lofty and forbidding walls; part of it is very old and part quite modern. Tradition says that the original building was a centre for the Knights Templars, whose duty it was to protect pilgrims and travellers on their journeys through the wilder parts of the country: it is said that this accounts for the fact that there is no escutcheon of the Order of Santa Clara upon the walls. The apse of the conventual church is Gothic, and resembles, with its lancet windows, those of Santo Domingo and San Francisco: the nuns are not allowed to leave their convent on any pretext whatsoever--they are cloistered for life; they do not even enter the body of their church, but worship in a gallery behind a wooden trellis, like the Jewesses in the synagogues of Bokhara. Our next drive was across the bridge to the village of Combarro, and then on to the monastery of San Juan de Poyo Grande, to hear the monks sing the _Salve Regina_ at their Saturday afternoon Mass. As we were just reaching the bridge, we got out of our carriage to look at the little house in which Pedro Sarmiento is said to have been born. Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa was a celebrated navigator of the sixteenth century. Sir Clements Markham tells us that Sarmiento’s writings on the Straits of Magellan are admirable work, and well known to English naval surveyors.[256] It seems that Sarmiento left Pontevedra at the age of eighteen, and devoted seven years of his life to studying the Incas. The Inquisition found him guilty of possessing mysterious and magic rings, and although his confessor had authorised his collecting them, he was condemned to say Mass, on his knees and nearly naked, in the Cathedral of Lima. While this sentence was being carried out, he was shut up in the convent of Santo Domingo without a single book, fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays, and reciting seven psalms a day. At length his case was brought before the Pope, who somewhat softened the severity of his punishment. He eventually returned to Spain, equipped a large fleet and sailed forth, to be caught by three English ships and tortured to confess that he carried precious metal. The English took him to Plymouth; he travelled thence to Windsor, where he was kindly treated by Queen Elizabeth, till his enemies got up some scandals about him, whereupon Elizabeth sent him on a diplomatic mission to Flanders and afterwards on another to Spain. He was taken prisoner, while asleep at Burgos, by Viscount de Bearny, and put in prison; thence he was ransomed by the king for six thousand _escudos_, and four horses. Such was the early history of the eminent navigator. He wrote many books, including a _Treatise on Navigation_, _Information concerning the Stars_, and a _Treatise on Fortification_.