edge, and would have effectually prevented any force from assembling to oppose the landing and forming of our men. And this landing-place had the additional advantage that it was but two leagues distant from Lima; so that we might have been at that city within four hours after we should have been first discovered from the shore. The place I have in view is about two leagues south of Callao, and just to the northward of the headland called, in Frezier's draught of that coast, Morro Solar. Here there is seventy or eighty fathom of water within two cables' length of the shore; and here the Spaniards themselves were so apprehensive of our attempting to land, that they had projected to build a fort close to the water; but as there was no money in the royal chests, they could not compleat so considerable a work, and therefore they contented themselves with keeping a guard of a hundred horse there, that they might be sure to receive early notice of our appearance on that coast. Indeed some of them (as we were told), conceiving our management at sea to be as pusillanimous as their own, pretended that this was a road where the commodore would never dare to hazard his ships, for fear that in so great a depth of water their anchors could not hold them. {265} And let it not be imagined that I am proceeding upon groundless and extravagant presumptions, when I conclude that fifteen hundred or a thousand of our people, well conducted, should have been an over-match for any numbers the Spaniards could muster in South America. Since, not to mention the experience we had of them at Paita and Petaplan, it must be remembered that our commodore was extremely solicitous to have all his men trained to the dexterous use of their fire-arms; whereas the Spaniards, in this part of the world, were wretched provided with arms, and were very awkward in the management of the few they had: and though on their repeated representations the court of Spain had ordered several thousand firelocks to be put on board Pizarro's squadron, yet those, it is evident, could not have been in America time enough to have been employed against us. Hence then by our arms, and our readiness in the use of them (not to insist on the timidity and softness of our enemy), we should in some degree have had the same advantages which the Spaniards themselves had on the first discovery of this country against its naked and unarmed inhabitants.