Japan and the Japanese

554 JAPAN. A. D. 1691.
distant. The head of the bay was very shallow, and the boats
were pushed through mud-banks. Mia, though not so large as
Quano, consisted of two thousand houses, with two spacious castles,
one of them for size and strength reckoned the third in Japan
There were two temples, in cue of which are preserved three, in
the other eight, miraculous swords, used by the race of demigods
who were the first inhabitants of Japan.
Tuesday, March 6th, the travellers dined at Okasaki, a town of
fifteen hundred houses, with a strong castle situate on the shores of
the same bay. The country travel'ed through was a fertile plain,
along the foot of a range of mountains, the shores of which, beyond
Okasaki, extended to the sea.
The next day (Wednesday, March 7) they passed through several
considerable places, of which Josida, with a castle and about a
thousand small houses, was the most considerable. Array, twelve
or fifteen miles distant, was a town of about four hundred houses,
situate not far from the sea, at the inland extremity of a harbor
called Suota, narrow at its entrance, but spreading out within.
Array was the seat of certain imperial commissioners appointed to
search the goods and baggage of all travellers, but particularly of
the princes of the empire, that no women nor arms might pass.
" This," says Kiimpfer, " is one of the political maxims which the
now reigning emperors have found it necessary to practise in order
to secure to themselves the peaceable possession of the throne ; for
the wives and female children of all the princes of the empire are
kept at Jedo, as hostages of the fidelity of their husbands and
parents. And as to the exportation of arms, an effectual stop has
been put to that, lest, if exported in any considerable quantities,
some of those princes might take it into their heads to raise rebel-
lions against the government as now established."
The harbor of Suota was crossed in boats, on the other side of
which the road led through a flat country, rather thinly inhabited.
They slept that night at Famamatz, a town of several hundred
inferior houses, with a large castle. The next day (Thursday,
March 8), travelling on through a beautiful plain,
in the afternoon
they reached the town of Kakejawa ; as they were passing through
which, a fire broke out, occasioned by the boiling over of an oil
kettle. Perceiving only a thick cloud behind them, they thought a