[59] Yet Taikō-Sama was not in general cruel. A curious letter of Father Organtino Brixiano, written in 1594, enumerates, among the reasons of Taikō’s great success, his clemency to the conquered princes, whom he never put to death after having once promised them their lives, and to whom he granted a revenue, small, but sufficient to maintain them, and which served to keep them quiet. Another reason was his having established for his soldiers during war a commissariat, of which he paid the expense, by which they were rendered much more efficient. He also kept them employed, for, besides the army maintained in Corea, he set them to work in building or repairing palaces and fortresses, or in other public works. At this time he had thirty thousand men at work upon one castle near Miyako, one hundred thousand at Fushimi. He also broke the power of the princes by transferring them to distant parts, while he inspired general respect by his strict justice, from which he was swerved by no considerations of relationship, family, or influence, secular or religious. Another reason mentioned by the missionary does not correspond so well with Taikō’s letter to the viceroy of Goa. He is said not only to have disarmed the country people, by whose strength and wealth the petty kingdoms had been sustained, but also to have reduced them to extreme poverty; but this, perhaps, applies rather to the petty lords than to the actual cultivators. This letter is in Hay’s collection, and a part of it, in English, may be found in Hackluyt’s fourth volume. [Dening’s “New Life of Toyotomi Hideyoshi” is the best work dealing with the career of “the Napoleon of Japan.”—EDR.] [60] Some curious information respecting the Philippines is contained in a letter dated Mexico, 1590, intercepted on its way to Spain by some English cruiser, and translated and published by Hackluyt in his fourth volume. This letter represents the country as very unhealthy “for us Spaniards,” of whom not more than one thousand were left alive out of fourteen thousand who had gone there in the twenty years preceding. It seems, too, that the Spaniards at Manila, not less than the Portuguese at Macao, had succeeded in opening a trade with China. “There is a place in China, which is an harbor called Macaran, which the king has given to the Spaniards freely; which shall be the place where the ships shall come to traffic. For in this harbor there is a great river, which goeth up into the main land, unto divers towns and cities, which are near to this river.” Where was this Spanish Chinese port? The annual galleons to New Spain were to Manila what the annual carac to Japan was to Macao,—a main support of the place. The privilege of putting a certain amount of goods on board was distributed among all the resident merchants, offices, and public institutions. [61] That any Japanese had been in America earlier than 1610 A. D. is not to be found in any Japanese sources.—K. M.