probably one, they excused their silence on that subject on the ground of not having been properly understood and interpreted. The factors at Nagasaki had been not less careful than themselves to say nothing about the search for mines. New interpreters were brought from Nagasaki, among them another apostate, whom there are grounds for supposing was the ex-provincial Ferreyra, between whom and the Jesuit prisoners they witnessed a bitter scene of mutual reproaches. A great many rigorous cross-examinations followed. The Dutchmen were required to sign a paper by which all the Company’s property was pledged for their reappearance before the imperial tribunals at any time that it might be discovered that they had landed missionaries. Their having discharged some pieces of artillery from the ship was insisted upon as a crime; also their ship having sailed off without waiting for them. The recent peace between Holland and Portugal was pointedly alluded to, and even the search for mines seems to have been suspected. The appearance of a ship on the east coast of Japan, which proved to be the “Castricoom,” some of whose people who landed were seized and sent to Yedo, gave rise to many new interrogations. Elserak, the director, at length arrived, and, after a separate examination, was confronted with them and signed the paper above described, when the Dutch were finally released, after an imprisonment of upwards of four months[123]. The “Castricoom,” more successful, discovered the Kurile Islands, Yetorofu and Uruppu, to which were given the names of _State’s Islands_ and _Company’s Islands_, and made some explorations of the east coast of Yezo, and of Sakhalin, taken to be a part of it. The information thus obtained, together with the two relations of Father de Angelis, written in 1616 and 1621, was all that was known of these regions till the explorations of Broughton and La Perouse, towards the close of the last century. Golownin’s adventures and experience there, as related in a subsequent chapter, bear a very remarkable and curious resemblance to those of Captain Schaëp and his companions. Their release was acknowledged in a solemn embassy from the Company,—that of Frisius. About the same time, in 1647, a Portuguese embassy arrived in Japan, in hopes, since the separation from Spain, of reviving the ancient commercial intercourse; but, though the ambassador was treated with respect, his request was peremptorily declined.