Finding that the means as yet employed had little effect upon the missionaries and their native assistants, a new and more effectual, because more protracted, torture was resorted to, known in the relations of the missionaries as the _Torment of the Fosse_. A hole was dug in the ground, over which a gallows was erected. From this gallows the sufferer, swathed in bandages, was suspended by his feet, being lowered for half his length, head downward, into the hole, which was then closed by two boards which fitted together around the victim so as to exclude the light and air. One hand was bound behind the back, the other was left loose, with which to make the prescribed signal of recantation and renunciation of the foreign creed; in which case the sufferer was at once released. This was a most terrible trial, indeed. The victim suffered under a continual sense of suffocation, the blood burst from the mouth, nose and ears, with a twitching of the nerves and muscles, attended by the most intolerable pains. Yet the sufferer, it was said, lived sometimes for nine or ten days. The year 1633, in which this punishment was first introduced, the second year of a new emperor, son of Shōgun Sama[113], proved more fatal than any previous one to the new religion. In the month of August of that year forty-two persons were burnt alive in various parts of Japan, eleven decapitated, and sixteen suspended in the fosse. The Dutchman Hagenaar, who was at Hirado in 1634, states, in his printed voyages, that during the time of his visit thirty-seven persons lost their lives at that place on the charge of being Catholics. Five of these perished by the torment of the fosse, others were beheaded, others cut to pieces, and others burnt.