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An.1684
Single Bark-logs. Piura.
fame, not varying above a point or two all the way from Lima, till such time as they come into the Bay of Panama: and even there they meet with no great Sea; but sometimes Northerly winds: and then they lower their Sails, and drive before it, waiting a change. All their care then is only to keep off from Shore; for they are so made that they cannot sink at Sea. These Rafts carry 60 or 70 Tuns of Goods and upwards; their Cargo is chiefly Wine, Oyl, Flower, Sugar, Quito-cloath, Soap, Goat-skins dreft, &c. The Float is manag'd usually by 3 or 4 Men, who being unable to return with it against the Trade-wind, when they come to Panama dispose of the goods and bottom together; getting a passage back again for themselves in some Ship or Boat bound to the Port they came from; and there they make a new Bark-log for their next Cargo.
The smaller sort of Bark-logs, described before, which lye flat on the Water, and are used for Fish- ing, or carrying Water to Ships, or the like (half a Tun or a Tun at a time) are more governable than the other, tho they have Masts and Sails too. With these they go out at night by the help of the Land- wind (which is seldom wanting on this Coast) and return back in the day time with the Sea-wind.
This sort of Floats are used in many places both in the East and West Indies. On the Coast of Coro- mandel in the East Indies they call them Catamarans. These are but one Log, or two sometimes, of a sort of light Wood, and are made without Sail or Rud- der, and so small, that they carry but one Man, whose legs and breech are always in the Water, and he manages his Log with a Paddle, appearing at a distance like a Man sitting on a Fish's back.
The Country about Payta is mountainous and bar- ren, like all the rest of the Kingdom of Peru. There is no Towns of consequence nearer it than Piura, which is a large Town in the Country 40 miles dis- tant.