Hildreth's "Japan as It Was and Is": A Handbook of Old Japan, Volume 2 (of 2)Hildreth, Richard
History
Hildreth's "Japan as It Was and Is": A Handbook of Old Japan, Volume 2 (of 2)
Hildreth, Richard
Japan -- History
There is in the “Asiatic Journal,” for December, 1838, a very striking
description of the present ruinous state of the once splendid and
magnificent city of Goa. It has been abandoned for Pongi, now known
as New Goa, six miles nearer the sea, and the present seat of the
shrunken Portuguese viceroyalty. The only inhabitants of Old Goa are a
few hundred monks, nuns, and their attendants, attached to the splendid
churches and monasteries still standing, among which towers conspicuous
the church of the Jesuits, in a beautiful chapel attached to which is
the monument of St. Francis Xavier. His body, removed thither from
the college of St. Paul, in which it was first placed, reposes upon a
sarcophagus or bier of Italian marble, faced with bronzes, representing
his missionary labors, and enclosed in a shrine of brass and silver.
It is alleged still to be in as good preservation as ever, and is
occasionally exhibited in public. The last of these exhibitions was in
1783.
NOTE F
JAPANESE DARING AND ADVENTURE EXTERIOR TO THE LIMITS OF JAPAN
The same Davis who had been Houtman’s pilot in the first voyage to the
East Indies sailed from England in 1604, as master of the “Tiger,” a
ship of two hundred and forty tons. While on her course from Bantam to
Batavia, the “Tiger” encountered a little junk of seventy tons, with
ninety Japanese on board, “most of them in too gallant a habit for
sailors.” They had left home, as it turned out, in a larger vessel,
which had been “pirating along the coast of China and Cambodia,”—much
the same business, by the way, in which the “Tiger” was herself
engaged,—but, having lost their vessel by shipwreck, they had seized
upon this little junk, laden with rice, and were trying to reach
Japan in it. In hopes to get some information out of them, they were
entertained for two days with “gifts and feasting”; but, at the same
time, their junk was searched for treasure which might be concealed
under the rice. While part of the “Tiger’s” men were employed in this
search, the Japanese made a desperate attempt to get possession of
that ship. Davis himself was killed in the first surprise, but the
Japanese were finally forced into the cabin, where, by breaking down a
bulkhead, some of the ship’s guns, loaded with bullets and case shot,
were brought to bear upon them. They disdained to ask quarter, and
all perished from effects of the shot except one, who jumped into the
sea. The narrative of this affair, given by Purchas (Pilg., Part 1, p.
137), and apparently written by an officer of the “Tiger,” winds up as
follows: “The Japanese are not suffered to land in any port of India
with weapons, being accounted a people so desperate and daring that
they are feared in all places where they come.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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