The presents—spoken of in the usual terms of Oriental mock modesty—consisted of two ponies and fifteen falcons, with harness for bird and beast, rolls of silk, precious drugs, ink, paper, pens, and twenty magnificent tiger-skins. The interview over, Hidéyoshi wished the envoys to go home at once. This they declined to do, but, leaving Kiōto, waited at the port of Sakai. A letter to the king finally reached them, but couched in so insolent a tone that the ambassadors sent it back several times to be purged. Even in its improved form it was the blustering threat of a Japanese bully. All this consumed time, which was just what Hidéyoshi wished. Some years before this, some Portuguese trading ships had landed at the island of Tané, off the south of Japan. The Japanese, for the first time, saw Europeans and heard their unintelligible language. At first all attempts to understand them were in vain. A Chinese ship happened to arrive about the same time, on which were some sailors who knew a little Portuguese, and thus communications were held. The foreigners, being handsomely treated, gave their hosts some firearms, probably pistols, taught their use, and how to make powder. These “queer things, able to vomit thunder and lightning, and emitting an awful smell,” were presented to Shimadzŭ, the daimiō of Satsuma, who gave them to Hidéyoshi. Among the presents, made in return to Chō-sen, were several of these new weapons made by Japanese. They were most probably sent as a hint, like that of the Pequot’s offering of the arrows wrapped in snake-skin. With them were pheasants, stands of swords and spears, books, rolls of paper, and four hundred gold koban (a coin worth about $5.00). With the returning embassy, Hidéyoshi sent the priest and a former colleague of Yoshitoshi to Seoul. They were instructed to ask the king to assist Hidéyoshi to renew peaceful relations between Japan and China. These, owing to the long continued piratical invasions from Japan, during the anarchy of the Ashikaga, had been suspended for some years past.