[30] In his account of his second visit to Yedo, a year later, Kämpfer gives the following account of this second audience: “Soon after we came in, and had, after the usual observances, seated ourselves in the place assigned us, Bingo-sama welcomed us in the emperor’s name, and then desired us to sit upright, to take off our cloaks, to tell him our names and age, to stand up, to walk, to turn about, to sing songs, to compliment one another, to be angry, to invite one another to dinner, to converse one with another, to discourse in a familiar way like father and son, to show how two friends or man and wife compliment or take leave of one another, to play with children, to carry them about in our arms, and to do many more things of a like nature. They made us kiss one another like man and wife, which the ladies, by their laughter, showed themselves to be particularly well pleased with. It was already four in the afternoon when we left the hall of audience, after having been exercised after this manner for two hours and a half.” [31] This is what Kämpfer, in another place, describes as a sort of round cakes, which the Japanese had learned to make of the Portuguese, as big as a common hen’s egg, and sometimes filled within with bean flour and sugar. [32] See the character given of Settsu-no-kami, as a harsh enemy of the Dutch, or at least, a strict disciplinarian over them; vol. i 347, 348. [33] “Annals des Empereurs du Japan,” p. 405, note, and in the “Asiatic Journal” for September, 1831. [34] The history of this image, derived from the same source, is given in a note on p. 193. The roof of the temple is supported on ninety-two columns, each upwards of six feet in diameter. [35] In one thousand parts, eight hundred and fifty-four were pure gold. The pure metal in our American coins is nine hundred parts in one thousand; or, in the old phraseology, they are twenty-one carats and twelve grains fine. [36] Having been discovered by Sir Stamford Raffles among the public documents at Batavia, he published an abstract of it in the appendix B to his “History of Java.” [37] Yet Pinto, whose knowledge of Japan preceded the time of Nobunaga, represents silver as very abundant there; and, indeed, it seems to have been this abundance which first attracted the Portuguese trade. On the whole, one does not derive a very high idea, from this tract, of the extent or correctness of the knowledge possessed by the Japanese of their own history, even the more recent periods of it. [See Dr. Knox’s paper on Arai Hakuseki in vol. xxx of the “Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan.”—EDR.] [38] This was a considerable improvement upon the state of things in the time of Xavier, when every third vessel was expected to be lost. See p. 51.