Japan and the Japanese

174 JAPAN. A. D. 16111613.
to be deducted out of their wages, Captain Saris sailed on the 5th
of December for Bantam, where he arrived the 3d of January,
1614. Having taken in a cargo of pepper, he sailed for home on
the 13th of February, anchored off the Cape of Good Hope on the
16th of May, and, on the 27th of September, arrived at Plymouth,
having in the preceding six weeks experienced worse weather anr1
encountered more danger than in the whole voyage beside.*
*
Captain Saris' account of his voyage and travels in Japan (which agrees
remarkably with the cotemporaneous observations of Don Rodrigo, and with
the subsequent ones of Karnpfer and others), may be found in Porchas,
"His Pilyrimes," Part i., Book iv.,chap. i.,sect. 4-8. Cocks' not less curi-
ous observations may be found in chap. Hi., sect. 1-3, of the same book and
part. There is also a readable summary of what was then known of Japan,
in Purchas, His Pilgrimage, Book v., ch. xv.
Rundall, in his "Memorials of the Empire of Japan," printed by the
Hackluyt Society, 1850, has re-published Adams' first letter, from two MSS.
in the archives of the East India Company ; but the variations from the
text, as given by Purchas, are hardly as important as he represents. He
gives also from the same records four other letters from Adams, not before
printed. It seems from these letters, and from certain memoranda of Cock?,
that there were three reasons why Adams did not return with S.iris, not-
withstanding the emperor's free consent to his doing so. Besides his wife
and daughter in England, he had also a wife, son and daughter in Japan.
Though he had the estate mentioned as given him by the emperor (called
Phebe, about eight miles from Uragawa), on which were near a hundred
households, his vassals, over whom he had power of life and death, yet he
had little money, and did not like to go home with an empty purse. He had
quarrelled with Saris, who had attempted to drive a hard bargain with him.
The E. I. Company had advanced twenty pounds to his wife in England.
Saris wanted him to serve the company for that sum and such additional p;iy
as they might see fit to give. But Adams, whom the D.utch, Spanish and
Portuguese, were all anxious to engage in their service, insisted upon a stipulated
hire. He asked twelve pounds a month, but consented to take s
Hundred pounds a year, to be paid at the end of two years.