[90] London had at that time a population of two hundred and fifty thousand.
[91] Probably the one at Kamakura.—Edr.
[92] See “Letters written by the English Residents in Japan, 1611-1623.”—K. M.
[93] This word, though not to be found in any of our dictionaries, was in current use, at this time, in the signification of head merchant of a factory ship, or trading post,—cape being, probably, a contraction of captain.
[94] Yezo, otherwise called Matsumae, the island north of Nippon. There is in Purchas, “Pilgrimes,” vol. i., p. 364, a short account of this island, obtained from a Japanese, who had been there twice. It was visited in 1620 by Jerome de Angelis, who sent home an account of its gold-washings, which reads very much like a California letter. It was also then as now the seat of extensive fisheries. The gold which it produced made the Dutch and English anxious to explore it. The Dutch made some voyages in that direction and discovered some of the southern Kuriles; but the geography of those seas remained very confused till the voyages of La Perouse. Matsumae was the scene of Golownin’s captivity in 1812. [See chap. xliii.] One of the ports granted to the Americans (Hakodate) is on the southern coast of this island.
[95] These privileges are given by Purchas, “Pilgrimes,” vol. i., p. 357, with a fac-simile of the original Japanese.
[96] The old Gothic edifice, afterwards destroyed in the great fire of 1666, is the one here referred to.
[97] This is the same temple and idol seen and described by Don Rodrigo.
[98] Captain Saris states that the New Testament had been translated into Japanese for their use; but this is doubtless a mistake. A number of books of devotion were translated into Japanese, but we hear nowhere else of any New Testament, nor were such translations a part of the Jesuit missionary machinery.
[99] Of another festival, on the 23d of October, Cocks gives the following account: “The kings with all the rest of the nobility, accompanied with divers strangers, met together at a summer-house, set up before the great pagoda, to see a horse-race. Every nobleman went on horseback to the place, accompanied with a rout of slaves, some with pikes, some with small shot, and others with bows and arrows. The pikemen were placed on one side of the street, and the shot and archers on the other, the middest of the street being left void to run the race; and right before the summer-house, where the king and nobles sat, was a round buckler of straw hanging against the wall, at which the archers on horseback, running a full career, discharged their arrows, both in the street and summer-house where the nobles sat.” This, from the date, would seem to be the festival of Tenshō Daijin. See p. 359. Caron, “Relation du Japon,” gives a similar description.