women, and even children, as they bore testimony to the sinoerity of their
Christian convictions.
THE DUTCH.
I t 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 offered 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 squadrons. Thus, cruising in
company, they went wherever they thought they could find a profitable 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 bum 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
Ryswick 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.
I t 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 command of Jaques Mahu, left the Texel
on the 24th of June, 1598. I t was sent out by the Indian Company of
Holland; and on board of the admiral’s ship was William Adams, as pilot.
Adams has told his own story with captivating simplicity; and it has been
preserved in the pages of that worthy compiler; honest old Purchas. He
tells us as follosw: “ Your worships will understand that I am a Kentish
man, born in a town called Gillingham, two English miles from Rochester,
and one mile from Chatham, where the queen’s ships do lie.” After stating
that he was regularly apprenticed and bred a seaman, he thus proceeds: “ I
have served in the place of master and pilot in her Majesty’s ships, and
about eleven or twelve years served the worshipful company of the Barbary
merchants, until the Indian traffic from Holland began; in which Indian
traffic I was desirous to make a little experience of the small knowledge
which God has given me. So, in the year of our Lord God 1598, I hired
myself for chief pilot of a fleet of five sail of Hollanders,” &c.
But the “ little experience ” of our English pilot proved both long and
sad. Sickness broke out in the ships, the admiral and a great many of the
men died; after divers calamities they reached the Straits of Magellan in
April, 1599; they were forced, not by any fault of Adams but by the folly
of the commander, to winter in the Straits, remaining in them nearly six
months, until provisions were exhausted and some of the men actually died
of hunger. At length, after getting into the Pacific, storms dispersed the
fleet; some were lost, some captured; the savages on the islands where
they landed in search of food and water, in more than one instance, lay in
ambush and murdered the men; and finally, after great suffering, it was
resolved, on Adams’ advice, to make for Japan. Of the five ships that had
left Holland together there remained but the one of which Adams was pilot.
But he kept a stout heart, and at last, on the 11th of April, 1600, he saw
the high lands of Japan in the province of Bungo, and on the 12th came to
anchor, when there were actually but five men of the whole ship’s company
able to go about and do duty. They were hospitably received, soldiers were
placed on board to prevent a robbery of their goods, a house was provided
for the sick, and their bodily wants were all supplied by the prince of Bungo,
who sent word to the Emperor of their arrival.
The Portuguese, it will be remembered, were already established in Japan,
and one of their commercial depots was at Nagasaki. Five or six days after
the arrival of the Dutch, there oame from that place a Portuguese Jesuit,
with some of his countrymen and some Japanese Christians. The former of
these immediately denounced the Hollanders as pirates, denying that they
had come for any purposes of trade, as they alleged, though their ship had
a full cargo of merchandize on board. This created a prejudice against them
in the minds of the Japanese, and the poor Hollanders lived in daily expectation
of being put to death. This was precisely what the Portuguese would
have been glad to see, influenced by the double motive of hatred of heretics