Cape St Augustine.

We arrived on the 6th May at Fernando Noronho, [in lat. 3 deg. 28' S. off
the coast of Brazil,] where we remained six days to take in water, and
to refresh ourselves. The 13th of the same month we departed, shaping
our course for the English channel, and arrived at Middleburgh, in
Zealand, on the 29th of July, 1600.

SECTION X.

_Voyage of William Adams to Japan, in 1598, and long Residence in that
Island_.[46]

INTRODUCTION.

This very curious article consists chiefly of two letters from Japan,
written by William Adams, an Englishman, who went there as pilot in a
Dutch fleet, and was detained there. His _first_ letter, dated Japan,
22d October, 1611, is addressed,--"To my unknown Friends and Countrymen;
desiring this letter, by your good means, or the news or copy thereof
may come to the hands of one, or many of my acquaintance, at Limehouse,
or elsewhere; or at Gillingham, in Kent, by Rochester." The _second_
letter has no date, the concluding part of it being suppressed or lost,
by the malice of the bearers, as Purchas suspected; but is addressed to
his wife, and was probably inclosed in the former, or perhaps sent home
by Saris, whose voyage will be found in the sequel. Adams appears to
have died about 1620, in Japan, as reported by the ship James, which
arrived from that island, in England, in 1621. Purchas observes, that
though this voyage was not by the Cape of Good Hope, he had yet inserted
it among the early English voyages to India, because performed to Japan.
The editor of Astley's Collection says that he once intended to have
placed it in a different division of his work, as performed by a
south-west course; but, because Adams is frequently mentioned in the
journals of Saris and Cocks, to whom he was serviceable in Japan, he
chose to follow the example of Purchas. One of the views of Adams, in
the first of these letters, in the opinion of the editor of Astley's
Collection, appears to have been to excite the English to repair to
Japan; and they seem to have entertained that object at the same time,
as Saris set out upon his voyage to that island six months before the
date of the letter from Adams.

[Footnote 46: Purchas his Pilgrims, I. 125. Astley, I. 525.]

In Astley's Collection, the editor has used the freedom, as he has done
in a variety of other instances, to make great alterations in the
arrangement of the original document, and even often makes important
changes in the