INTRODUCTION. 27 



see jiresently, were ready enough to give increased impetus, whenever they could, to the tide 

 of calamity which ultimately overwhelmed their rivals, hut that tide had commenced its flow, in 

 the form of persecution of Christianity, fully three years before a Dutchman set foot in Japan. 

 It began, as we have said, in the quarrels of the monastic orders themselves. 



It would be wrong to leave this brief sketch of the Portuguese relations with Japan without 

 bearing witness to the noble constancy of the thousands of native Christians who were put to death 

 for their religion. The history of Christianity's persecutions contains no more touching chapter 

 than that which records the cruel torments and heroic Christian courage of men, women, and 

 even children, as they bore testimony to the sincerity of their Christian convictions. 



THE DUTCH. 



It is to an Englishman that the Hollanders are indebted for an introduction to Japan, and 

 for the establishment of their earliest commercial relations. After the grant by the Pope of all 

 the western and about half the eastern hemisphere to the Spaniards and Portuguese, these 

 people, who were then not without naval strength, were unwilling to allow any share of trade 

 to the other powers of Europe ; and, whenever they could, they seized their unarmed vessels as 

 contraband, if they found them within the imaginary limits of their Papal grant, confiscated 

 their cargoes, and treated their crews as sea-thieves and smugglers. 



The Dutch and English, who had no respect for the Pope's geography, and as little faith in 

 his religion, denied his title to the ownership of the whole earth, and profanely likened him 

 to Satan when he ofiered to our Lord whole kingdoms, in which he had not title in fee to a 

 single square foot. But as Spain and Portugal were, in the assertion of their title, as much 

 in the habit of relying on powder and ball as on men's conscientious submission to the decrees 

 of the holy father, the Dutch and English rarely sent out their ships, and especially to the 

 "south seas," without taking care to arm them ; and commonly they dispatched them in squad- 

 rons. Thus, cruising in company, they went wherever they thought they could find a profit- 

 able trade ; and deemed it a religious duty (which they scrupulously performed) to seize and 

 plunder, whenever they could, any Spanish or Portuguese ship, and to make a descent on 

 their coasts, and burn their colonial towns and villages. Whoever would read the story of their 

 wild, exciting, and often romantic adventures, may find them in Esquemeling's or Burnet's 

 histories of the buccaneers. The hatred between Spain and Portugal on the one side, and the 

 Dutch and English on the other, was intense. Differing in religion, the first named had no 

 gentler epithets to apply to their enemies than "vile Lutherans," "schismatics," "accursed 

 heretics ; " while the latter repaid them, by applying the equally mild terms of "lying Papists," 

 "foul idolaters," " worshippers of wood and rotten bones." This state of embittered feeling 

 prevailed all through the reigns of Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I. of England, and ceased 

 only in the time of William III., when the peace of Kyswick allowed, on the part of Spain and 

 Portugal, a little freedom of commerce to other nations, who, by the way, were becoming more 

 powerful than the Spaniards and Portuguese on the Pacific and the eastern waters. 



It was during this period of national animosity, in the latter part of the reign of Elizabeth, 

 that the Dutch made their way to Japan. A fleet of five sail of Dutch ships, under the com- 

 mand of Jaques Mahu, left the Texel on the 24th of June, 1598. It was sent out by the Indian 

 Company of Holland ; and on board of the admiral's ship was William Adams, as pilot. Adams 



