Japan and the Japanese

RESOLUTION TO SAIL FOR JAPAN. 137
trade-wind and pleasant weather. In their way, they encountered
a group of islands somewhere about 16 degrees of north latitude
(perhaps the Sandwich Islands), to which eight
of their men ran
off with the pinnace, and were eaten, as was supposed, by the
islanders, who, by the report of one who was taken, were cannibals.
In the latitude of 27 degrees north, the vessels, encountering vari-
able winds and stormy weather, were separated. The Hope was
never more heard of; the Charity still kept on her course, though
with many of her men sick, and others dead : when, on the llth
of April, being then in great misery, with only four or five men,
out of a company of four-and-twenty, able to walk, and as many
more to creep on their knees, the whole expecting shortly to die, at
last they made the hoped-for land which proved to be the eastern
coast of Ximo. They were immediately boarded by numerous
boats, which they had no force to resist ; but the boatmen offered
no injury beyond stealing what they could conveniently lay their
hands on. This, however, was put a stop to the next day by the
governor of the neighboring district, who sent soldiers on board to
protect tbe cargo, and who treated the crew with great kindness,
furnishing them with all necessary refreshments, and giving them a
house on shore for their sick, of whom nine finally died.
For some days the only conversation was by signs ; but, before
long, a Portuguese Jesuit, with some other Portuguese, arrived
from Nagasaki, on the opposite western coast of the island.
The Dutch now had an interpreter ; but, what with religious and
what with national antipathies, little was to be hoped from a Jesuit
and a Portuguese. In fact, the Portuguese accused them of being
pirates, and two of their own company, in hopes to get control of
the
cargo, turned traitors, and plotted with the Portuguese. After
nine days the emperor sent five galleys, in which Adams, attended
by one of the sailors, was conveyed to Osaka, distant about eighty
leagues. Here he found the
"
emperor, in a wonderful costly house,
gilded with gold in abundance," who, in several interviews, treated
him with great kindness, and was very inquisitive as to his country
and the cause of his coming. Adams replied that the English Ayere
a people who had long sought out the East Indies, desiring friend-
ship, in the way of trade, with all kings and potentates, and having
in their country divers commodities which might be exchanged to
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