The memory of Don Sebastian Viscaino is intimately associated with California, for, in 1596, he was commissioned by the King of Spain to make a voyage of discovery to California, and, as is well known, sailed from the Port of Acapulco with three vessels and reached the Port of La Paz, where he established himself, built a church and dispatched a series of expeditions westward. This expedition ended somewhat disastrously on account of the discontent of the soldiers under his command, but in 1602 he was appointed Captain General of an expedition sent by order of Phillip III and fitted out by the Count of Monterey, viceroy of Mexico. During this voyage, which lasted nine months, the whole coast of Southern California was carefully surveyed. After reaching Cape Mendocino, they proceeded as far north as 45 degrees north latitude, but he was forced to return to Acapulco on account of illness and mortality amongst his men. The account of his embassy to Japan, evidently written under his dictation by the secretary of the expedition, is divided into twelve chapters, and fills ninety-seven printed pages in the collection of unedited documents to which I have already referred. This document, which is full of interesting and valuable information concerning the avowed and secret aims of his mission, gives a detailed account of its history. It enables one clearly to recognize moreover the manifold causes and events which within a few years wrought so complete a change in Iyeyasu’s views, and which culminated in the banishment of foreigners, the extirpation of Christianity, and the complete isolation of Japan for centuries. On the 22nd of March, 1611, Viscaino sailed in a vessel named the “San Francisco” from Vera Cruz, accompanied by the Japanese nobleman now known as Don Francisco de Velasco, twenty-two Japanese merchants, a commissary and six friars of the Franciscan order, a captain named Palacios and a crew of fifty-two. Before launching into Viscaino’s report, of which I shall give a literal translation, excepting where abbreviations and commentaries are necessary, let us read the Japanese records of the foregoing events, which were indirectly communicated by the well-known scholar, Mr. Ernest Satow, to Señor Nuñez Ortega, in 1879. They demonstrate that in the 17th century, as now, the official records of Japan were written with a brevity and reticence which causes so many modern Japanese war dispatches to read more like our weather reports:--