Note 24 — Chapter IX · CLIMATOLOGY OF THE PERUVIAN ANDES

In most of the coast towns the ford or ferry is an important institution and the chimbadores or baleadores as they are called are expert at their trade: they know the régime of the rivers to a nicety. Several settlements owe their origin to the exigencies of transportation, permanent and periodic; thus before the development of its irrigation system Camaná, according to General Miller (Memoirs, London, 1829, Vol. 2, p. 27), was a hamlet of some 30 people who gained their livelihood through ferrying freight and passengers across the Majes River.