What contributed to increase this jealousy of the Dutch was the peace between Holland and the Portuguese, which followed the assumption of the crown of Portugal by the house of Braganza, and the separation of Portugal from Spain, in the year 1640. Evidence of this very soon appeared. In the year 1643 the Dutch sent two ships from Batavia, the “Castricoom” and the “Breskens,” to explore the yet little-known northern coast of Japan, the island of Yezo, and the adjacent continent, and especially to search out certain fabled islands of gold and silver, whence the Japanese were said to derive large supplies of those metals. These vessels, when off Yedo, were separated in a storm, and the “Breskens,” in need of supplies, touched at a fishing village in about forty degrees of north latitude. The lord of the village, and a principal person of the neighboring district, visited the ship with great show of friendship, and having enticed the captain, Shaëp, and his chief officers on shore, made them prisoners, bound them, and sent them off to Nambu, near by. They were permitted to communicate with the ship, and to obtain their baggage, but at first were treated with much rigor on suspicion of being Spaniards or Portuguese. It being found, however, that they paid no respect to the sign of the cross or to pictures of the Virgin, it was concluded that they were Hollanders, and they were treated with less severity. At Nambu they were splendidly entertained, and in their twenty days’ journey thence to Yedo, in which they passed through a hundred well-built villages, they had nothing to complain of except the inconvenience of the crowds that flocked to see them. In every village they saw rewards posted up for the discovery of Christians. Not being willing to reveal the true object of their voyage, they stated themselves to have been driven to the north in an attempt to reach Nagasaki. It was plain, however, that their story about having come from Batavia, and being in the service of the East India Company, was not believed. It was suspected that they had come from Macao or Manila for the purpose of landing missionaries, and they were subjected in consequence to numerous fatiguing cross-examinations, in which a bonze assisted, who spoke Spanish, Portuguese, English, and Flemish, and whom they conjectured to be some apostate European. What increased the suspicions of Japanese was, that five Jesuits from Manila had recently, in an attempt to reach Japan, been arrested at the Lew Chew Islands, and sent thence to Yedo. The Dutchmen were confronted with these Jesuits, to their great alarm. They also feared, if the true object of the voyage came out, being exposed to punishment not only for undertaking unauthorized explorations, but for falsehood in concealing and misrepresenting their object; but when the Japanese had learned from Nagasaki that two Dutch ships had been sent on a voyage for the exploration of Tartary, of which the factors represented theirs as