[Footnote 162:  I suspect this to be a mistaken translation of barco-longo, long barks, or rafts rather, as the subsequent description indicates.—­E]

In navigating these vessels, they use a very large rudder, with one mast in the middle of the machine, on which they have a large sail, like our west country barges on the river Thames.  As these machines can only sail before the wind, they are only fit for these seas, where the wind blows constantly one way, seldom varying above a point or two in the whole voyage from Lima to Panama.  If, when near Panama, they happen to meet a north-west wind, as sometimes happens, they must drive before it till it changes, merely using their best endeavours to avoid the shore, for they will never sink at sea.  Such vessels carry sixty or seventy tons of merchandise, as wine, oil, flour, sugar, Quito cloth, soap, dressed goats skins, &c.  They are navigated by three or four men only; who, on their arrival at Panama, sell both the goods and vessel at that place, as they cannot go back again with them against the trade-wind.  The smaller fishing barks of this construction are much easier managed.  These go out to sea at night with the land-wind, and return to the shore in the day with the sea-breeze; and such small barco longos are used in many parts of America, and in some places in the East Indies.  On the coast of Coromandel they use only one log, or sometimes two, made of light wood, managed by one man, without sail or rudder, who steers the log with a paddle, sitting with his legs in the water.[163]

[Footnote 163:  On the coast of Coromandel these small rafts are named Catamarans, and are employed for carrying letters or messages between the shore and the ships, through the tremendous surf which continually breaks on that coast.—­E.]

The next town to Payta of any consequence is Piura, thirty miles from Payta, seated in a valley on a river of the same name, which discharges its waters into the bay of Chirapee [or Sechura.] in lat. 5 deg. 32’ S. This bay is seldom visited by ships of burden, being full of shoals; but the harbour of Payta is one of the best on the coast of Peru, being sheltered on the S.W. by a point of land, which renders the bay smooth and the anchorage safe, in from six to twenty fathoms on clear sand.  Most ships navigating this coast, whether bound north or south, touch at this port for fresh water, which is brought to them from Colon at a reasonable rate.

Early in the morning of the 3d November, our men landed about four miles south of Payta, where they took some prisoners who were set there to watch.  Though informed that the governor of Piura had come to the defence of Payta with a reinforcement of an hundred men, they immediately pushed to the fort on the hill, which they took with little resistance, on which the governor and all the inhabitants evacuated Payta, but which we found empty of money, goods, and provisions.