Here we had opportunity to get a quantity of good flour, or wheat meal, of very good European wheat, that is to say, of that sort of wheat; and withal, had good biscuit baked on shore, so that now we got a large recruit of bread, and our men began to make puddings, and lived very comfortably. We likewise got good sugar at the ingenioes, or sugar-mills, of which there were several here, and the farther north we went their number increased, for we were now in the latitude of 28° 2' south. We had but one port now of any consequence that we intended to touch at, until we came to the main place we aimed at, which was Lima, and this was about two-thirds of the way thither; I mean Porto Rica, or Arica, which is in the latitude of 18° of thereabouts. The people were very shy of us here, as having been much upon their guard for some years past, for fear of buccaneers and English privateers: but when they understood we were French, and our French captain sent two recommendations to them from a merchant at St. Jago, they were then very well satisfied, and we had full freedom of commerce here also. From hence we came the height of Lima, the capital port, if not the capital city, of Peru, lying in the latitude of 12° 30'. Had we made the least pretence of trading here, we should, at least, have had soldiers put on board our ships to have prevented it, and the people would have been forbidden to trade with us upon pain of death. But Captain Merlotte having brought letters to a principal merchant of Lima, he instructed him how to manage himself at his first coming into that port; which was to ride without the town of Callao, out of the command of the puntals or castles there, and not to come any nearer, upon what occasion soever, and then to leave the rest to him. Upon this, the merchant applied himself to the governor for leave to go on board the French ship at Callao; but the governor understood him, and would not grant it by any means. The reason was, because there had been such a general complaint by the merchants from Carthagena, Porto Bello, and other places, of the great trade carried on here with French ships from Europe, to the destruction of the merchants, and to the ruin of the trade of the galleons, that the governor, or viceroy of Peru, had forbid the French ships landing any goods.