From Miyako Don Rodrigo proceeded to Fushimi, adjoining, where he embarked for Ōsaka, ten leagues down a river, as large as the Guadalquivir at Seville, and full of vessels. Ōsaka, built close to the sea, he reckons to contain one million inhabitants. Here he embarked in a junk for Nagasaki. Not finding his vessel in proper repair, he accepted an invitation from the emperor to return to Suruga, where he renewed his endeavors to persuade that prince to expel the Dutch, but without effect. At last, with presents and despatches for the king of Spain, he set sail August 1, 1610, after a stay in Japan of nearly two years.[78] Meanwhile an event occurred of which Rodrigo makes no mention, but for which the Portuguese were inclined to hold him responsible, no less than the Dutch. The annual carac from Macao had arrived, as we have seen, in the autumn of 1609, after an interval of three years, commanded, as it happened, by the very same person who had been chief magistrate there on occasion of the late seizure and execution of certain Japanese. The emperor, strengthened, as it was thought, by the expectation of Dutch and Spanish trade, encouraged the prince of Arima to revenge the death of his subjects who had perished at Macao; and when the carac was ready to sail on her return voyage she was attacked by a fleet of Japanese boats. They were two or three times repulsed, but, taking the carac at a disadvantage, becalmed and drifted into a narrow passage, they succeeded in setting her on fire, and in destroying her with all her crew. Both the Dutch factors who had been left in Japan, and the king of that island, Hōin-Sama, who had exerted himself greatly for the establishment of Dutch commerce, were not a little annoyed at the non-appearance of any Dutch vessels at Hirado during the year 1610. The Dutch in the East Indies had, indeed, at this moment other things to attend to. Verhœven, after his return to the Moluccas, had been entrapped and treacherously slain at Banda, by the natives of that island, along with many of his principal officers. This, however, did not prevent the Dutch from soon after making a treaty with these islanders, by which they obtained the sole right of purchasing their nutmegs and mace, and which they followed up by the establishment of not less than seven forts in the Molucca Islands, and by vigorous, though as yet unsuccessful, attempts to drive away the Spaniards who had come to the aid of the Portuguese. [Illustration: A SCENE IN THE PALACE GARDENS, KYŌTŌ]