At the end of three-and-twenty days, a ship arrived from the kingdom of Bungo, in which came many merchants, who, as soon as they had landed, waited on the prince with presents, as was customary. Among them was an old man, very well attended, and to whom all the rest paid great respect. He made prostrations before the prince, presenting him a letter, and a rich sword garnished with gold, and a box of fans, which the prince received with great ceremony. The reading of this letter seemed to disturb the prince, and, having sent the messengers away to refresh themselves, he informed the Portuguese, through the interpreter, that it came from the king of Bungo and Hakata, his uncle, father-in-law, and liege lord, as he was also the superior of several other principalities. This letter—which, as is usual with him in such cases, Pinto, by a marvellous stretch of memory, undertakes to give in precise words—declared that the writer had heard by persons from Satsuma that the prince had in his city “three Chenchicogins [_Tenjikujin_], from the end of the world, very like the Japanese, clothed in silk and girded with swords; not like merchants, whose business it is to trade, but like lovers of honor, seeking to gild their names therewith, and who had given great information, affirming, on their veracity, that there is another world, much larger than this of ours, and peopled with men of various complexions”; and the letter ended with begging that, by Hizen dono, his ambassador, the prince would send back one of these men, the king promising to return him safe and soon. It appeared from this letter, and from the explanations which the prince added to it, that the king of Bungo was a severe sufferer from a gouty affection and from fits of melancholy, from which he hoped, by the aid of these foreigners, to obtain some diversion, if not relief. The prince, anxious and bound as he was to oblige his relative and superior, was yet unwilling to send Zeimoto, his adopted kinsman, but one of the others he begged to consent to go; and when both volunteered, he chose Pinto, as he seemed the more gay and cheerful of the two, and so best fitted to divert the sick man’s melancholy; whereas the solemn gravity of the other, though of great account in more weighty matters, might, in the case of a sick man, rather tend to increase his ennui. And so, with many compliments, to which, says Pinto, the Japanese are much inclined, he was given in charge to the ambassador, with many injunctions for his good treatment, having first, however, received two hundred taels with which to equip himself.