It is not our purpose to trace minutely the progress and fluctuating fortunes of the Jesuit missionaries; nor, indeed, would it always be easy to extract the exact truth from relations into which the marvellous so largely enters. Xavier’s letters throw very little light on the subsequent history of his mission, which mainly depends upon accounts derived from an inquisition into the particulars of the apostle’s ministry and miracles in the East, ordered to be made shortly after his death by John III., of Portugal, and which resulted in a large collection of duly attested depositions, containing many marvellous statements, most of them purporting to come from eye-witnesses, from which source the Jesuit historians of the Eastern missions and the biographers of the saint have drawn most of their materials. If we are to believe them, Xavier was not only always victorious in his disputes with bonzes; he went even so far, shortly after his arrival in Japan, as to raise the dead—a miracle which furnished Poussin with a subject for a celebrated picture. Xavier, we are told, had been charged in India with a similar interference with the laws of nature; it is true he attempted to explain it away, as, perhaps, he would have done this Japanese miracle; but that denial the historian Maffei thinks, instead of disproving the miracle, only proves the modest humility of Xavier. Though at first well received, as we have seen, by the king of Satsuma, and though, in the course of near a year he remained there, the immediate family and many of the relations of Anjirō were persuaded to be baptized, yet the remonstrances of the bonzes, followed by the transfer of the Portuguese trade, for the sake of a better harbor, from Kagoshima to Hirado, caused the king of Satsuma to issue an edict forbidding his subjects, under pain of death, to renounce the worship of their national gods. In consequence of this edict, Xavier departed for Hirado, which island, off the west coast of Shimo, having separated from the kingdom of Hizen, had become independent under a prince of its own. Anjirō was left behind, but soon afterwards was obliged to fly to China, where, as Pinto informs us, he was killed by robbers. At Hirado, in consequence of the representations of the Portuguese merchants, Xavier was well received; but, desirous to see the chief city of Japan, leaving Torres behind, he set out with Fernandez and two Japanese converts on a visit to Miyako. Proceeding by water, he touched first at Hakata, a considerable town on the northwest coast of Shimo, and capital of the kingdom of Chikuzen, and then at Yamaguchi, at that time a large city, capital of Nagato, the most western kingdom or province of the great island of Nippon, separated at this point from Shimo by a narrow strait.