Japan and the Japanese

VOYAGE OF THE BRESKENS AXD CASTRICOOM. 203
witnessed a bitter scene of mutual reproaches.
A great many rig-
orous cross-examinations followed. The Dutchmen were required
to sign a paper by which all the Company's property was pledged,
for their reappearance before the imperial tribunals at any time
that it might be discovered that they had landed missionaries.
Then having discharged some pieces of artillery from the ship was
insisted upon as a crime ; also their ship having sailed off without
waiting for them. The recent peace between Holland and Portugal
was pointedly alluded to, and even the search for mines seems to
have been suspected. The appearance of a ship on the east coast
of Japan, which proved to be the Castricoom, some of whose people
who landed were seized and sent to Jedo, gave rise to many new
interrogations.
Elserak, the director, at length arrived, and, after a
separate examination, was confronted with them and signed the
paper above described, when the Dutch were finally released, after
an imprisonment of upwards of four months.*
The Castricoom, more successful, discovered the Kurule Islands,
Eetoorpoo and Ooroop, to which were given the names of State's
Inlands and Company's Islands, and made some explorations of the
east coast of Jeso, and of Sagaleen, taken to be a part of it. The
information thus obtained, together with the two relations of Father
de Angelis,
written in 1016 and 1021, was all that was known of
these regions till the explorations of Broughton and La Perouse,
towards the close of the last century. Golownin's adventures
and experience there, as related in a subsequent chapter, bear
a very remarkable and curious resemblance to those of Captain
Schaep and his companions. Their release was acknowledged in a
solemn embassy from the Company, that of Frisius. About the
same time, in 1047, a Portuguese embassy arrived in Japan, in hopes,
since the separation from Spain, of reviving the ancient commercial
intercourse ; but, though the ambassador was treated with respect,
his request was peremptorily declined.
A new emperor, a minor, having succeeded in 1G50, the Dutch
Company sent Waganaar, in 1651, to congratulate him. Among
* There is nn account of the voyage of the Castricoom in Thevenot's collec-
tion. It is also contained in Voyuyes au J\~ord, torn. in. Charlevoix gives
a full and interesting abstract of the adventures of Captain Schaep and big
companions, derived from two different French versions of a Dutch original :
but I know not where either the versions or the original can be fouuol.