“Having waited here upwards of an hour, and the emperor having in the meanwhile seated himself in the hall of audience, Settsu-no-Kami and the two commissioners came in and conducted our president into the emperor’s presence, leaving us behind. As soon as he came thither, they cried out aloud, ‘Hollanda Captain!’ which was the signal for him to draw near and make his obeisance. Accordingly he crawled on his hands and knees to a place showed him between the presents, ranged in due order on one side, and the place where the emperor sat on the other, and then kneeling, he bowed his forehead quite down to the ground, and so crawled backwards like a crab, without uttering one single word. So mean and short a thing is the audience we have of this mighty monarch. Nor are there any more ceremonies observed in the audience he gives even to the greatest and most powerful princes of the empire; for, having been called into the hall, their names are cried out aloud; then they move on their hands and feet humbly and silently towards the emperor’s seat, and having showed their submission by bowing their forehead down to the ground, they creep back again in the same submissive posture. [Illustration: PLOUGHING; A FREIGHT CART] “The hall of audience is not in the least like that which hath been described and figured by Montanus in his ‘Memorable Embassies of the Dutch to the Emperors of Japan.’ The elevated throne, the steps leading up to it, the carpet pendent from it, the stately columns supporting the building which contains the throne, the columns between which the princes of the empire are said to prostrate themselves before the emperor, and the like, have all no manner of foundation but in that author’s fancy. The floor is covered with an hundred mats, all of the same size. Hence it is called Senjō-shiki, that is, The Hall of an Hundred Mats.[29] It opens on one side towards a small court, which lets in the light; on the opposite side it joins two other apartments, which are on this occasion laid open towards the same court, one of which is considerably larger than the other, and serves for the councillors of state when they give audience by themselves. The other is narrower, deeper, and one step higher than the hall itself. In this the emperor sits when he gives audience, raised only on a few carpets. Nor is it an easy matter to see him, the light reaching not quite so far as the place where he sits, besides that the audience is too short, and the person admitted to it, in so humble and submissive a posture that he cannot well have an opportunity to hold up his head and to view him. This audience is otherwise very awful and majestic, by reason chiefly of the silent presence of all the councillors of state, as also of many princes and lords of the empire, the gentlemen of his majesty’s bed-chamber, and other chief officers of his court, who line the hall of audience and all its avenues, sitting in good order, and clad in their garments of ceremony.