the great steppes and deserts of Mongolia, entered China, where he rose to extraordinary eminence in the service of Kublai Khan. This conqueror, learning the existence of numerous large islands in the ocean contiguous to the Chinese shores, fitted out a powerful armament to reduce them to obedience; but his armada was unsuccessful: storms overtook the Mongol fleet, the natives also displayed heroic courage and resolution, and the lord of the Celestial Empire experienced the mortification of witnessing the failure of his designs. With this triumph, however, Zypangu, or Japan, fell back into its original obscurity, and for nearly three centuries was heard of no more.

At length the Portuguese, acting as the pioneers of European civilisation, brought back once more into the light the great islands of Japan, destined to play thenceforward a singular part in the history of the world. Ferdinand Mendez Pinto, whose imagination converted trivial adventures and actual experience into a romance, was driven by a storm on the coast of Bungo in the year 1542. There appears to be no good reason for doubting the fact or the date, though many of the circumstances, which grave historians have borrowed from the narrative of Pinto, would appear to belong to the mythical portion of Portuguese annals. We shall accordingly abstain from dwelling on them; especially as, if true, they could scarcely be said to throw any peculiar light on the intercourse of western nations with the Japanese.

In that age the discovery of a new country was regarded by the Roman Catholic Church, and more particularly by the Jesuits, almost entirely as an occasion for courting the honours of martyrdom. This at least was the fate to which the zeal of the ecclesiastical adventurers often led them. Viewing what they did from the philosophical level of the nineteenth century, we are apt to imagine them to have been actuated by political motives, particularly when we call to mind the answer made by a Spaniard to some Japanese officers, to whom, in the hope of producing an effect on their imagination, he had pointed out the extent of his master's dominions on a map of the globe. How is it that your king,' inquired the Japanese, ' has managed to possess himself of half the world?' 'He commences by sending priests,' replied the Spaniard, who win over the people; and when this is done, his troops are despatched to join the native Christians, and the conquest is easy and complete.'

6

Under the guidance of whatever ideas they acted, the priests and friars of that age were no sooner made acquainted with the discovery of Japan than they longed to be engaged there in the work of conversion. St Francis Xavier, called by his church the Apostle of the Indies, set out from Goa, according to some, in the year 1547, and arriving in the empire, was received with great marks of favour by the native princes. With a facility which must astonish the missionaries of these days, he made numerous converts, erected many churches, and laid the foundations of a system which promised, had it not been accidentally arrested, to bring the whole Japanese nation within the pale of the Romish Church. What renders the triumphs of those Jesuits more surprising, is the way in which, according to their own shewing, they went to work. Having found, or formed, a few interpreters, they wrote their sermons in some European language, and having caused them to be translated into Japanese, and

written out fairly in Roman characters, delivered them to the congregations, without themselves understanding a syllable of what they read. The effect may be conjectured. Hearing their language pronounced as strangers usually pronounce a foreign tongue, the Japanese were convulsed with laughter at the good fathers, and often, perhaps, professed to accept their doctrines in order to console them for having laughed at their eloquence.

It forms no part of our present object minutely to trace the history of Christianity in Japan, the progress of which, according to Catholic historians, was furthered by the working of innumerable miracles. Considered simply in itself, the success of the missionaries was sufficiently astonishing. Multitudes perpetually came over to their creed, including several princes, and numbers of the most wealthy and influential nobles of the land; Jesuits and monks of all other orders poured into the country in a constantly expanding stream; native priests were multiplied; and these, with a zeal found frequently among new converts, spread themselves over the face of the country, animated by the most ardent desire to overthrow the temples of their forefathers, and give currency to the new faith. Buddhists and Sintoists, priests and bonzes, succumbed before their impetuous energy, until the Christians amounted to a million in number, and were found in every grade of society from the throne downwards. It was at one time believed that the emperor himself had deserted the ancient shrines of idolatry, and listened with approval to the doctrines of the new religion.

But in the history of the Romish Church it has often happened that an immoderate and ill-timed zeal has destroyed in a moment the work of years. Proverbially patient upon the whole, ecclesiastics sometimes suffer themselves to be transported by passion far beyond the limits of sound policy, accept their own wishes for proofs, and mistake doubtful phenomena for undeniable facts. It sometimes happens also, that pious men are tainted with pride, temporal as well as spiritual, and in sudden and overpowering accesses of this feeling are betrayed into errors inimical if not fatal to their views. This at least was the case in Japan, where bishops and other church dignitaries, in conformity with their established system of looking down with a certain degree of contempt upon the laity, roused the indignation of the unconverted nobles, who began seriously to apprehend that their humble foreign teachers might in the end prove to be their masters if care were not taken to check their encroachments at once.

The anger and resentment of the old nobility were brought to a climax by an incident that occurred on the road of Yedo. It is customary in Japan for princes, and governors of provinces, when departing for any distant portion of the empire, to leave behind them as hostages their wives and children in the metropolis. Ostensibly for the purpose of visiting them, though really in obedience to other maxims of policy, they are expected to make annual visits to the court; and on these occasions it is customary for all persons of inferior rank, clergy or laity, natives or strangers, to descend from their palanquins in token of respect, or, if on foot, to shew their reverence by certain forms of obeisance. One of these grandees returning from his distant government, was encountered by a Romish bishop, who, instead of conforming to the fashion of the country, ordered his bearers to pass by with disdainful indifference. Disgusted

by this display of prelatical pride, the prince, who possessed numerous friends at court, laid a complaint before the emperor; and at the same time succeeded in alarming the aristocracy of the country, whose kindly feelings had been already alienated by the pompous insolence and cupidity of the foreign clergy.

Something more, however, was wanting to kindle the fires of persecution against Catholicism. The spark was supplied by the reply, already quoted, of the Spaniard, who is said to have been enticed into the country on his way from Mexico to the Philippines. Taico, at that time emperor, when the Castilian's unguarded avowal was reported to him, exclaimed: 'What then! are my dominions filled with traitors?' The seeds of distrust once sown were nourished by various circumstances. The bonzes had always of course been hostile to the foreign clergy, whose superior influence and learning they naturally beheld with envy. The pride of the good fathers by degrees alienated from them even those among the nobles who had been once their friends; and therefore, when Taico's apprehensions had been excited, there was none found to stand in the breach between his indignation and those who were destined to become the victims of it. In the first outbreak of imperial vengeance twenty-six priests obtained the honours of martyrdom, and to the thoughtful and far-seeing a cloud became visible in the horizon which perpetually grew more lurid and threatening. To repress, however, not to extirpate Christianity, seems to have been at first all that was contemplated by the policy of the court. Its followers were now sufficiently numerous to excite alarm in the minds of its adversaries, who could scarcely hope to triumph over it without encountering the risks and horrors of a civil war.

While things were in this situation a new and unexpected event occurred to complicate the difficulties of Catholicism in Japan. The Dutch, who had long beheld with envy the golden harvest reaped by the Portuguese in the further East, determined, towards the close of the sixteenth century, to enter upon and dispute the field with them. Up till that moment the gains of the first discoverers would appear to have been so great as to be almost incredible. Japan abounds with the precious metals; and the Portuguese, whose cupidity was at least equal to their superstition, swept, as it were, with a drag-net all the gold they could collect into their galleons, and transported it to Macao-the creation and emporium of the riches they acquired in Japan. One ship alone is said to have carried 300 tons' weight of gold from Japan to their new settlement in China.

No wonder, therefore, that the Dutch, who have never been wanting in their respect for mammon, should have determined to dispute this rich prize with their rivals. About the year 1598 they fitted out an expedition consisting of several vessels, and sent it out by way of Magellan Straits and the Pacific towards the utopia of their commercial and political ambition. On board of one of these ships was William Adams, of Gillingham, in Kent, who had been a master in the navy in the service of Queen Elizabeth, but had been allured by tempting offers to direct the enterprise of our phlegmatic neighbours. One vessel alone of this expedition reached Japan, on whose shores it was wrecked apparently about the year 1600, with William Adams on board.

Within the last few years the name of this old navigator has acquired

some degree of celebrity. The writer of the present Paper, wishing to discover whether any trace of his family or any remembrance of his name still lingered in his native place, went down two or three summers ago to Gillingham. Its little old church is prettily situated, and its churchyard filled with tombs, headstones, and grassy graves; among which, in company with a friend, he searched for several hours, without, however, finding the spot in which the remains of Elizabeth, the wife of Adams, rest in peace. Within the church also his investigations were fruitless, as well as in the town itself. He afterwards learned, however, that there was a Mr Adams among the ropemakers in Chatham Dockyard, but, during his stay of nearly a week, was unable to meet with him. Recently, through his friend Mr Cole, well known for his collection of rare autographs and for his acquirements as an antiquarian, he applied to the Rev. Mr Page, vicar of Gillingham, who having obligingly examined the parish register, replied as follows: 'In answer to your inquiry received this morning, I have to state that I have searched our parish register, where I find the name of "William Adams, son of John Adams, baptised the 24th day of September 1564," which I presume is the person in question. I have examined also the marriages from 1584 to 1624, but find none of William Adams, nor in the baptisms any trace of his children. It is probable that he might have been married in his wife's parish. There seems to have been one Henry Adams, who had several children.'

If the above William Adams be assumed to be the same as the navigator, he was thirty-six years old when he landed in Japan. We shall let the adventurer himself tell how he arrived, and what his first treatment was. Great sickness had visited the ship, so that, when it reached the group, 'there were no more than six besides myselfe that could stand upon his feet. So we in safetie let fall our anchor about a league from a place called Bungo. At which time cam to us many boats, and we suffered them to come abord, being not able to resist them, neither of us understanding the one the other. Within a two or three daies after our arrivall ther cam a Jesuit from a place called Langasacke, to which place the caracke of Amakan is yearly wont to come, which, with other Japonas that were Christians, were our interpreters, which was not to our good, they being our mortal enemies. Nevertheless, the king of Bungo, the place where we arrived, shewed us great friendship, for he gave us a house on land, where we landed our sick men, and had all refreshing that was needfull. We had when we came to ankor in Bungo, sicke and whole; foure-and-twentie men, of which number the next day three died. The rest for the most part recovered, saving three, which lay a long time sicke, and in the end also died. In the which time of our being here the emperor hearing of us, sent presently five gallies or frigates to us to bring me to the court, where his highness was, which was distant from Bungo about an eightie English leagues; so that as soon as I came before him he demanded of me of what country we were; so I answered him in all points, for there was nothing that he demanded not, both concerning war and peace betweene country and country, so that the particulars here to write would be too tedious. And for that time I was commanded to prison, being well used with one of our mariners that came to serve me.' This was in consequence of the representations of the Spaniards and Portuguese,

who described the English and Dutch as mere pirates, possessing no country of their own, but subsisting by plunder on the high seas. Adams, however, soon proved himself to be a man of great ingenuity and resources; and by building vessels for the emperor after the English model, so raised himself in his favour that he was soon enabled to turn the tables on his accusers, and it may very reasonably be supposed, to have contributed largely to their expulsion from the country.

At this period, which may be regarded as one of transition from the old system of free trade to the new one of rigid exclusion, the commerce of Japan was very considerable, extending to nearly all the countries lying east of the Straits of Malacca. It was carried on in junks resembling those of the Chinese, with sails woven like mats from the leaves of trees, which, when they required to be furled, were folded up in the manner of a fan; the hull was built with cedar, and of a far stronger construction than that of the junks found there since navigation to foreign countries has been prohibited. Some idea may be formed of the numbers of the Japanese who addicted themselves to a seafaring life from what occurred at that time in the Philippines, particularly at Manilla, to which they brought iron, flour, brawn, and various other kinds of provisions. The Spaniards, though eager for the profits of the trade, held the traders themselves in suspicion, partly on account of their numerical strength, and partly for their warlike character. For this reason, though the city was surrounded by a strong stone wall, the inhabitants deemed it prudent to build a second within the former, behind which they might retire in case of attack. A Japanese junk seen by the Dutch on the coast of the Philippines, calculated to be about 110 tons' burden, was laden with iron, flour, and hams. It had been twenty days in coming from Japan, which it had left in company with two other junks. Its sails were, as above described, of reeds and matting, its anchors of wood, and its cables of straw.

In these comparatively frail embarkations they traded to Cochin-China, Champa, Cambodia, Siam, and Patani on the eastern coast of the Malay peninsula, everywhere impressing the natives with a high idea of their enterprising and warlike disposition. There is some obscurity in the accounts transmitted to us of the commodities they collected in these various countries; but we find they obtained from Cochin-China wood of aloes, which they were in the habit of burning constantly as a perfume, and cast large quantities on the funeral piles of the great and opulent. This wood was brought down by the rivers from the unknown countries of the interior. From Champa they obtained the precious gum denominated calambac, regarded throughout the East as the finest of perfumes; and from Siam and Patani shagreen, the skin of a species of squalus, with which, like the Europeans, they made sheaths for their weapons, mathematical instruments, &c. From the latter countries they also obtained immense numbers of wild white goat - skins, on which they designed numerous curious and fantastic figures with the smoke of ricestraw, which they understood the art of fixing. With these they manufactured various garments, and the Spaniards of the Philippines procured them for the making of tippets.

The specie they made use of in this trade consisted of small copper coins with holes in the middle, which were strung together by hundreds and by