After each troop or band, the captain followed on horseback, his bed and all his necessaries being laid upon his own horse equally poised on both sides, and over all was spread a covering of red felt of China, on the top of which sat the captain crosslegged, like a huckster between two paniers. Such as were old or weak in the back had a staff artificially fixed on the pannel, on which he could lean back and rest himself as if sitting in a choir. We met the captain-general of this new garrison two days after meeting his first band, having in the mean time met several of these bands in the course of our journey, some a league, and others two leagues from each other. The general travelled in great state, much beyond the other bands, yet the second band had their arms much more richly decorated than the first, and the third than the second, and so every successive band more sumptuous than another. The captain-general hunted and hawked all the way, having his own hounds and hawks along with him, the hawks being hooded and lured as ours in England. The horses that accompanied him for his own riding were six in number, and were all richly caparisoned. These horses were not tall, but of the size of our middling nags, short and well knit, small-headed, and very mettlesome, and in my opinion far excelling the Spanish jennet in spirit and action. His palanquin was carried before him, being lined with crimson velvet, and having six bearers, two and two to carry at a time. Such excellent order was taken for the passing and providing of these soldiers, that no person either inhabiting or travelling in the road by which they passed and lodged, was in any way injured by them, but all of them were as cheerfully entertained as any other guests, because they paid for what they had as regularly as any other travellers. Every town and village on the way being well provided with cooks-shops and victualling houses, where they could get every thing they had a mind for, and diet themselves at any sum they pleased, between the value of an English penny and two shillings. The most generally used article of food in Japan is rice of different qualities, as with our wheats and other kinds of grain, the whitest being reckoned the best, and is used instead of bread, to which they add fresh or salted fish, some pickled herbs, beans, radishes, and other roots, salted or pickled; wild-fowl, such as duck, mallard, teal, geese, pheasants, partridges, quails, and various others, powdered or put up in pickle. They have great abundance of poultry, as likewise of red and fallow deer, with wild boars, hares, goats, and kine. They have plenty of cheese, but have no butter, and use no milk, because they consider it to be of the nature of blood.