1*0 ST NICOTINE 



of the natives to mistake that they were being deceived 

 and robbed by the strangers. The first serious mischief 

 began in 1597. Xavier had left Japan for China, and his 

 just and accomplished coadjutors had been succeeded by a 

 host of Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustine and other 

 friars who had flocked in from Goa, Malacca, Macao and 

 other Portuguese settlements, all of whom commenced 

 their career by setting the Japanese laws and usages at 

 defiance. Speaking of the foreign traders, an old writer 

 declares that they were by dishonest means rapidly 

 draining away the golden marrow of Japan. And the 

 progress made in proselytising is shown in the fact that within 

 a few years of their arrival there were in Nagasaki alone no 

 fewer than twelve parish churches and several monasteries, 

 presided over by a bishop. Merited retribution, stern and 

 swift, came in 1616 with the accession to the Shogunate of 

 Hidetada, and eventually ended in 1637 in the total 

 expulsion of the Portuguese and Spaniards from Japan. 

 It is noteworthy that the Dutch residents sided with the 

 Japanese and gave of their best and bravest during the 

 prolonged sanguinary conflict. 



A gleam of brighter vision breaks upon the scene when 

 we touch upon the period which brought the first English- 

 man to Japan. The story of the Elizabethan mariner, 

 William Adams, in relation to the place and the people, 

 does something to redeem Europe's ill fame in that far- 

 away land. He was a Kentish man, who, in his youth, had 

 been apprenticed to a shipbuilder at Limehouse. At the 

 end of the term he entered the Royal Navy as navigating 

 officer. We next find him in his thirty-second year (1598) 

 seized with an overmastering passion for foreign adventure. 

 In the capacity of pilot-major he joined a Dutch merchant 

 fleet of five vessels bound for the East Indies. Their 



