Japan and the Japanese

JAPANESE DARING AND ADVENTURE. 567
ship two hundred and forty tons. While on her course from Bantam tc
Batavia, the Tiger encountered a little junk of seventy tons, with ninety
Japanese on board, " most of them in too gallant a habit fur sailors." They
had left home, as it turned out, in a larger vessel, which had been " pirating
along the coast of China and Cambodia," much the same business, by the
way, in which the Tiger was herself engaged, but, having lost their vessel
by shipwreck, they had seized upon this little junk, laden with rice, and were
trying to reach Japan in it. In hopes to get some information out of them,
they were entertained for two days with "gifts and feasting ;" but, at the
same time, their junk was searched for treasure which might be concealed
under the rice. While part of the Tiger's men were employed in this search,
the Japanese made a desperate effort to get possession of that ship. Davis
himself was killed in the first surprise, but the Japanese were finally forced
into the cabin, where, by breaking down a bulkhead, some of the ship's guns,
loaded with bullets and case shot, were brought to bear upon them. They
disdained to ask quarter, and all perished from effects of the shot except one,
who jumped into the sea. The narrative of this affair, given by Purchas
(Pilg., Part i., p. 137), and apparently written by an officer of the Tiger,
winds up as follows : "The Japanese are not suffered to land in any port of
India with weapons, being accounted a people so desperate and daring that
they are feared in all places where they come."
In conformity to this character of the Japanese is the account given by
Floris, cape merchant of the Globe, an English ship, which touched at Siam
in 1612, while performing the voyage mentioned p. 1G1 of the text. A
short time previously, two hundred and eighty Japanese, the slave-soldiers
of a principal Siamese noble, who had been put to death by the royal authority,
had revenged their master by seizing on the king of Siam, whom
they compelled to subscribe to such terms as they dictated, " after which,
they had departed with great treasure, the
themselves."
Siamese not being able to right
The good service rendered to the Portuguese by Japanese mercenaries at
the siege of Molucca, in 1606, is mentioned in the text, p. 142. It appears,
from a curious tract concerning the Philippines, preserved by Thevenot, that
when De Silva, governor of those islands, undertook, in 16U8, to drive the
Dutch from the Moluccas, he was obliged to send to Japan for saltpetre,
metal, and even for founders to cast cannon. A body of Japanese formed,
in 1619, a part of the Dutch garrison in their fort at Jacatara (named abott
that time Batavia), while besieged by the natives on the island, and block-
aded at the same time by an English squadron, as mentioned p. 183 of
the text. Of the Japanese settled on the island of Amboyna, and involved
with the English in the massacre there, mention is made on p. 186. Haganaar,
who was at Cambodia in 1637, found among the inhabitants of that
city seventy or eighty families of Japanese, whom he describes as not daring
to return to their own country, with which, however, they carried on trade,
by means of Chinese ships. They were in great favor with the king of Cam-