PUNISHMENT OF THE INDIANS FOR NOT ATTENDING CHURCH.
Now to return to the discourse of my voyage.
After having remained an entire month at Mechique, I returned to St. Jean de Luz, at which place I embarked in a patache, for Porto-bello, from which it is four or five hundred leagues. We were three weeks at sea before arriving at the said Porto-bello, when I found a great change of country; for, instead of the very good and fertile land, which I had seen in New Spain, as I have related above, I found a very bad country; this place of Porto-bello being the most evil and pitiful residence in the world. It rains there almost always, and if the rain ceases for an hour, the heat is so great, that the water becomes quite infected, and renders the air contagious, so that the greater part of the newly arrived soldiers and mariners die. The country is very mountainous, covered with forests of fir, in which there are such quantities of monkeys, that it is wonderful to behold. Nevertheless, the said harbour of Porto-bello is very good; there are two castles at the entrance, which are tolerably strong, where there are three hundred soldiers in garrison. Adjoining the said port, where the fortresses are, there is another, which is not at all commanded by them, and where an army might land safely. The king of Spain esteems this port a place of consequence, being near to Peru, there being only seventeen leagues to Panama, which is on the south coast.
This port of Panama, which is on the sea of the (south), is very good; there is good anchorage, and the town is very mercantile.
In this place of Panama is collected all the gold and silver which comes from Peru, and where it is embarked, with other riches, upon a little river, which rises in the mountains, and descends to Porto-bello; which river is four leagues from Panama, from whence all the gold, silver, and merchandise must be conveyed on mules: and being embarked on the said river, there are but eighteen leagues to Porto-bello.
One may judge that, if the four leagues of land which there are from Panama to this river were cut through, one might pass from the south sea to the ocean on the other side, and thus shorten the route by more than fifteen hundred leagues; [ [88] ] and from Panama to the Straits of Magellan, would be an island, and from Panama to the New-foundlands would be another island, so that the whole of America would be in two islands.
If an enemy of the king of Spain should hold the said Porto-bello, he could prevent any thing leaving Peru, except with great difficulty and risk, and at more expense than profit. Drac [ [89] ] went to the said Porto-bello, in order to surprise it, but he failed in his enterprise, having been discovered; in consequence of which, he died from disappointment, and ordered, in dying, that they should put him in a coffin of lead, and throw him into the sea, between an island and the said Porto-bello.
Having remained a month at the said Porto-bello, I returned to St. Jean de Luz, where we sojourned fifteen days, waiting while our ships were careened, to go to the Havanna, to the rendezvous of the armies and fleets; and for that purpose, having left the said St. Jean de Luz, when we were twenty leagues at sea, a hurricane took us with such fury, with a north wind, that we thought all was lost, and were so separated one from the other, that we could only rally at the Havanna. On the other hand, our ship made so much water, that we thought we could not avoid the peril; for if we took half an hour's repose, without pumping out the water, we were obliged to work for two hours without ceasing; and had we not met with a patache, which set us in our route again, we should have been lost on the coast of Campesche.
On this coast of Campesche, there are quantities of salt, which is made and procured without artificial means, by reservoirs of water, which remain after the high tides, where it crystallizes in the sun.