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Updated: June 1, 2025
Xavier then having made above a month's abode in Amanguchi, and gathered but small fruit of all his labours, besides affronts, continued his voyage towards Meaco with his three companions, Fernandez, Matthew, and Bernard.
The last yeere, deare brethren, I wrote vnto you from Firando, how Cosmus Turrianus had appointed me to trauile to Meaco to helpe Gaspar Vilela, for that there the haruest was great, the labourers few, and that I should haue for my companion in that iourney Aloisius Almeida.
His design was to have reduced the whole estate under his own dominion; but he was only able to make himself master of Meaco, where the emperor kept his court, and of the provinces depending on it.
He departs from Meaco to return to Amanguchi. Being returned to Amanguchi, he gains an audience of the king. He obtains permission to preach. He is visited by great multitudes. The qualities which he thinks requisite in a missioner to Japan. He answers many men with one only word. He preaches in Amanguchi. He speaks the Chinese language without learning it. The fruit of his preaching.
The first foure haue in them at the least three thousand and fiue hundred schollers: in the fift are many mo. For Bandu prouince is very great and possessed with sixe princes, fiue whereof are vassals vnto the sixt, yet he himselfe subiect vnto the Iaponish king, vsually called the great king of Meaco: lesser scholes there be many in diuers places of this Ilande.
Since these revolutions, the king of Meaco took the title of Cubo Sama, and he who had been deprived of it still retained the name of Dairy; and, excepting only the power, there was still left him all the privilege of royalty, in consideration of the blood of the Camis. His descendants have had always the same title, and enjoyed the same advantages.
Furthermore in the citie Meaco is the pallace of the high Priest, whom that nation honoureth as a God, he hath in his house 306 Idoles, one whereof by course is euery night set by his side for a watchman. He is thought of the common people so holy, that it may not be lawfull for him to goe vpon the earth: if happily he doe set one foote to the ground, he looseth his office.
The emptie barke is out of hand set a fire for honours sake by their friends that folow them in another boat of their owne, thinking it blasphemie that any mortall creature should afterward once touch the barke that had bene so religiously halowed. Truly when we went to Meaco, eight dayes before we came to the Ile of Hiu at Fore towne, sixe men and two women so died.
The name of that celebrated town, so widely spread for being the seat of empire and religion, where the Cubosama, the Dairy, and the Saso kept their court, seemed to promise great matters to Father Xavier; but the effect did not answer the appearances: Meaco, which in the Japonian tongue signifies a thing worth seeing, was no more than the shadow of what formerly it had been, so terribly wars and fires had laid it waste.
The journey from Amanguchi to Meaco is not less than fifteen days, when the ways are good, and the season convenient for travelling; but the ill weather lengthened it to our four travellers, who made two months of it; sometimes crossing over rapid torrents, sometimes over plains and forests thick with snow, climbing up the rocks, and rolling down the precipices.
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