Japan and the Japanese

FIRST ENGLISH VOYAGE THITHER. 161
TVs letter, which was given in charge to the master's mate of
the Dutch vessel, must have reached the English East India Com-
pany's factory at Bantam, in Java, previous to the first of June,
1G12 ; for on that day an answer to it was despatched by the Globe,
which had just arrived from England, and which, sailing from Bantam
to Patania, met there the same master's mate who had brought
A.dams' letter, and who, being just about to return to Japan in a
Dutch pinnace, promised to deliver the answer.
Already, however, independently, of Adams' letter, a project
had been started in England for opening a trade with Japan,
founded upon a knowledge of Adams' being there, derived from
the crew of the Dutch ship, the Red Lion. The Globe, which
left England January 5, 1G11, carried letters to Adams to that
effect, and she was followed in April by the Clove, the Thomas
and the Hector, under the command of Captain John Saris, an old
adventurer in the East, and a former resident at Bantam, with
letters from the king of England to the emperor of Japan.
After touching, trading, negotiating and fighting, at Socotra,
Mocha, and other ports of the lied Sea, Saris arrived at Bantam
in October, 1612. Soon after his arrival the letter of Adams was
re-read in presence of the assembled merchants ; and doubtless it
encouraged Saris in his project of visiting Japan. Having taken in
seven hundred sacks of pepper,
in addition to the broadcloths, gunpowder,
and other goods brought from England, Saris sailed on the
14th of January, 1613, in the Clove, his crew consisting of seventy-
four English, one Spaniard, one Japanese, to serve as an interpreter,
he speaking also the Malay language, which Captain Saris
understood, and five Swarts, probably Malays.
Passing in sight of the south coast of Celebes, Saris touched at
several of the ports in the group of the Moluccas, occupied at
that time, some of them by Dutch and others by Spanish facto-
ries, the Spaniards from Manilla having come to the rescue of the
Portuguese, whom the Dutch had driven out. all Regarding new
comers (if of any other nation than their own) with scarcely less
suspicion and hostility than they did each other, and both of them
joining to oppress and plunder the unhappy natives, " who were
Wrought upon," so Saris says, " to spoil one another in civil war,"
the Dutch and Spaniards, secure in strong forts, sat by and looked
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