that all his statements were involved in the
same doubtful reputation, and he shared the
usual fate of credulous men voyaging far in
ignorant times. But he spoke the truth
concerning Zipangu, or, as he called it,
Cipango; consequently, his words did not
die, but bore their fruit in due season. In
the sixteenth century, a certain Genoese,
one Christopher Columbus, based some
geographical researches of his on Marco Polo's
plans and charts and maps; and it was the
large island to the east, written on the shore
line of the Yellow Sea, that he went out to
seek, when he fell upon a continent midway.
Columbus never reached Japan; but
Ferdinand Meudez Pinto, the Portuguese, was
shipwrecked there in fifteen hundred and
forty-three, when he and his men were
received with kindness and liberality, and
suffered to establish a trade with the
natives,—suffered also to profess and
propagate their religion. Father Xavier went
there from China; and his success in
proselytising was so great, that the more zealous and
orthodox Japanese became alarmed, and
appealed to the emperor to banish these foreign
bonzes from the kingdom. For all answer to
which prayer, the emperor calmly inquired,—

"How many sects may there be in Japan?"

"Thirty- five," says the deputation, with all
the conscious pride of religious abundance.

"Very well," replies the emperor, Nabunanga,
"where thirty-five sects can be tolerated,
we can easily bear with thirty-six.
Leave the strangers in peace."

So the Portuguese Christians held their
ground, and Jesuit and Dominican, Augustine
and Franciscan, converted the followers
of Buddha at their pleasure. This agreeable
state of things did not last long. Prosperity
and protection induced rapacity and
insolence; the laity were hardly content with
cent. per cent. interest on their ventures, and
the ecclesiastics showed no greater
moderation. Besides, they quarrelled among
themselves: the Dominicans and Franciscans
reviling each other as bitterly as ever
Catholics and Protestants have done, and
only uniting in a common hatred against the
Jesuits. The native Christians were
scandalised; the native heathen revolted; and
the work of conversion slackened. At last
a certain bishop, meeting a Portuguese
noble, both in their sedans, refused to alight,
as was the law of the land, but ordered his
bearers to go forward, turning aside his
shaven head as he passed the noble, and
bearing himself with genuine ecclesiastical
haughtiness. That bishop was the last straw
on the Japanese camel, and his rudeness
completed what vice, rapacity, immorality,
and intolerance had begun. In sixteen
hundred and thirty-nine the Portuguese
were finally expelled the country, having
been previously degraded and persecuted;
and, since then, the Japanese heart has borne
only hatred and contempt for the very name
of Portugal: hatred and contempt so great,
that the Dutch were enabled to keep out the
English, to whom the Japanese were favourably
inclined, simply by telling them that the
king, Charles the Second, was married
to a Portuguese princess. But the Dutch,
besides assisting in the massacre of their
European rivals,—a massacre which included
all the native Christians,—were willing to
undergo any humiliation, and to undertake
any baseness, in order to secure to
themselves a trade monopoly and
uninterrupted relations. The Dutch history, written
in Japan, is one of the meanest and wickedest
in the world.

It was strange, though, that an Englishman
should have been the first to introduce
the Dutch into that coveted eastern kingdom.
Yet it was through William Adams, the
English pilot of the Dutch admiral's ship,
that the Hollanders ever got footing. ln
fifteen hundred and ninety-eight Adams, a
"Kentish man, serving in the place of
master and pilot in her majesty's ships, and
about eleven or twelve years serving the
worshipful company of the Barbary
merchants, until the Indian traffic with Holland
began, desirous of making a little
experience of the small knowledge which God
had given him, hired himself for chief pilot
of a fleet of five sail of Hollanders;"
and managed so well, that, after storms,
shipwreck, famine, and other disasters, he
anchored the admiral's ship in one
thousand six hundred off Bungo in Japan, and was
hospitably received by the natives. But the
Portuguese, who then held the whole of the
Japanese trade in their hands, denounced
the Dutch as pirates, "denying that they had
come for any purposes of trade or
merchandise;" which naturally raised up a
strong prejudice against the strangers, and
made them daily fear the Japanese ultima ratio
of things. William Adams was imprisoned
forty-one days: the Portuguese were earnest in
demanding of the emperor the death of the
whole ship's crew. But better counsels
prevailed. The Dutch ship was seized, and
the Dutchmen retained in the country;
suffered to live, marry, and settle as they
would: while the English pilot, Adams, was
raised to high rank and place about the
emperor, teaching him a smattering of
mathematics and other sciences, and enlightening
him as to the condition of foreign countries
and strange religions. Things went on
smoothly enough, when, in sixteen hundred
and nine, two armed Dutch ships came to
Japan. They were cruising after the large
Portuguese carrack which made the yearly
trading voyage from Macao to Japan, and
which would have been such an inestimable
prize if caught. The ship had sailed, so the
buccaneers missed their object; but, putting
in at Firando, they sent their commanders to
court, to see what they could get for themselves,
so that they might come by Japanese