Among the dependencies, at present, of the Japanese empire, are reckoned at the north, besides this island, the southern half of the large island or peninsula of Sakhalin, called by the Japanese Oku Yezo (upper Jeso), or, as Siebold says, Karafuto, and the three smaller Kurile islands, Kunajiri, Etoropu, and Uruppu, numbered on the Russian charts as the 20th, 19th, and 18th Kurile islands, and the two latter called by the Dutch _State’s Island_ and _Company’s Island_. On the south, the Lew Chew Islands form, or did form (for the Japanese seem lately to have renounced their claim of sovereignty), a dependency of the kingdom of Satsuma. But all these are of comparatively recent acquisition, subsequent to the accession of Hashiba. It is said, indeed, on Japanese authority, that Yezo was first invaded in 1443 by the Japanese family of Matsumae; but it is apparent from missionary letters that in 1620 it was a recent settlement. The Japanese annals date the conquest of the Lew Chew Islands from the year 1610; and, according to Golownin, the Japanese settlements on Sakhalin have been subsequent to the voyage of La Perouse in 1782. Of Nippon, at least equal in extent to Great Britain, and with a population nearer, it would seem, to that of Great Britain now than to what that island could boast in the reign of Elizabeth, the missionaries were as yet acquainted only with the southwestern part—their establishments being confined to the kingdom of Nagato, at its western extremity, where it is separated from Shimo by a narrow strait, and to the great cities of Miyako, Ōsaka, and Sakai, situated towards the middle of the southern coast. Many princes, nobles, and large landed proprietors had fallen under the influence of the Jesuits, and had professed the new faith; but it does not appear that either in Nippon or in the adjoining island of Shikoku (about equal in extent to Sicily) any considerable progress had been made in converting the rural population. It was in the island of Shimo, the westernmost in situation and the second in size (two-thirds as large as Ireland), that the new religion had taken the firmest root. The kingdom of Bungo, indeed almost the whole of the eastern portion of that island, was thoroughly indoctrinated with the new faith; and such was still more the case with the kingdom of Arima and the principality of Ōmura, embracing that great southwestern peninsula itself, divided into three smaller peninsulas by two deep bays, one opening to the south and the other to the west, at the head of the latter of which is situated the city of Nagasaki. [Illustration: PAINTING OF TAIKŌ SAMA]