eight enough to sink
her, and our three men who were in her remained unhurt. Don Pedro
Midrando, the Spanish commander, ordered these three men into his
own ship, in which he intended to sail for Payta. As for me, he gave
directions that I should be sent forty miles up the country, to a
place called _Piura_, and was so kind as to leave Mr Pressick the
surgeon, and my serjeant Cobbs, to bear me company. Mr Hately and
the rest of our men were ordered to Lima by land, a journey of four
hundred miles.[2] Hately had the misfortune to be doubly under the
displeasure of the Spaniards: First, for returning into these seas
after having been long their prisoner, and being well used among them:
And, second, for having stripped the Portuguese captain at Cape Frio
of a good quantity of moidores, which were now found upon him. Don
Pedro proposed to have this business searched to the bottom, and the
guilty severely punished, without exposing the innocent to any danger.

[Footnote 2: Lima is above six hundred miles from Cape Blanco, and
Piura is about seventy-five miles from the same place. Betagh gives no
account of the place where he landed; but forty miles northwards from
Piura would only carry him to the north side of the bay of Payta; and,
as he makes no mention of passing any river, he was probably landed on
the south side of the river Amatape or Chira.--E.]

Sec. 2. _OBSERVATIONS MADE BY BETAGH IN THE NORTH OF PERU._

Leaving Mr Hately for the present, I proceed to the observations I
made on the road, as the admiral was so good as send me up into the
country, till his return from Payta. As the weather in this part of
the world is much too hot to admit of any labour in the middle of the
day, the custom is to travel only from six in the evening till eight
next morning. My Indian guide set me on the best mule he had,
which did not think proper to follow the rest, so that I led my
fellow-travellers while day lasted. The whole country through which we
travelled was an open plain, having Indian plantations laid out with
tolerable regularity, on both sides of us. This champaign country is
from thirty to an hundred miles broad, and extends three hundred
miles along shore; and I was travelling to the southward, having the
Cordelieras, or mountains of the Andes, on my left hand, and the great
Pacific Ocean to the right. As the soil is good and fertile, this land
would be as fine a country as any in the world, if well watered; but
trave