Japan and the Japanese

38 JAPAN. A. D. 15471548.
sounded, every householder who heard it was obliged to repeat it.
And upon the signal thus given, and which spread from house to
house, and village to village, all were obliged to march armed to
the spot whence it came, the whole population of the district being
thus very soon collected.
By this means, in the course of seven days, during three of which
the young prince lamented his murdered relatives at a convent of
bonzes in a grove near the city, after which he proceeded to confiscate
the estates of the rebels, Pinto collects for him an army, -
he is generally pretty liberal in such matters, estimated at one
hundred and thirty thousand men, of whom seventeen thousand
were cavalry. The multitude thus collected breeding a famine,
the prince marched upon Fucheo, where he was received with great
demonstrations of loyalty. But, before repairing to the palace, he
stopped at the temple where the body of his father was lying, whose
obsequies he celebrated with much pomp, the observance lasting
through two nights, with a great display of torches and illuminations.
The closing ceremony was the presentation to the son of
the bloody garments of the father, on which he swore that he would
show no mercy to the traitors, even though to save their lives they
might turn bonzes ; but that, rather than allow them to escape, he
would destroy every convent or temple in which they might take
refuge.
On the fourth day, having been inaugurated as king, but with
little pomp, he marched with a still increasing army against the
rebels, who, to the number of ten thousand, had entrenched them-
selves on a neighboring hill, where, being -surrounded by the royal
forces, rather than surrender, they were cut off to a man.
The city of Fucheo was left almost in ruins by this civil war ;
and the Portuguese, despairing of being able to find purchasers for
their goods, proceeded to the city of Hyamonyoo, ninety leagues to
the southward, on the bay of Cangoxima, where they remained for
two months and a half, unable to sell their cargo, as the market
was completely overstocked by Chinese merchandise, which had
been poured in such quantities into the Japanese ports as to be
worth much less than it was in China. Pinto and his company
were entirely at a loss what to do ; but from this dilemma they
were delivered, as Pinto will have it, by the special providence of