s, or if they
renounced their Christianity, they were allowed to go undisturbed; but if
any one persisted in the new doctrine he was sent off to be tortured by
hot water at the boiling springs. This torture was now improved by
requiring the victim to have his back slit open and the boiling water
poured directly on the raw flesh. He used the most monstrous means to
force the people to renounce their faith. He compelled naked women to go
through the streets on their hands and knees, and many recanted rather
than suffer such an ordeal. Other cases are recorded too horrible to be
related, and which only the ingenuity of hell could have devised. That any
should have persisted after such inhuman persecutions seems to be almost
beyond belief. Guysbert says that in 1626 Nagasaki had forty thousand
Christians, and in 1629 not one was left who acknowledged himself a
believer. The governor was proud that he had virtually exterminated
Christianity.

But the extermination had not yet been attained. The severity of the
measures adopted in Nagasaki had indeed driven many into the surrounding
provinces, so that every place of shelter was full. They awaited in terror
the time when they too should be summoned to torture and death. Usually
they had not long to wait, for the service of the Christian Enquiry was
active and diligent. New refinements of cruelty were constantly invented
and applied. The last and one of the most effectual is denominated by the
foreign historians of these scenes the _Torment of the Fosse_. Mathia
Tanner, S. J., in his _History of the Martyrs of Japan_, published in
Prague, 1675, gives minute accounts of many martyrdoms. His descriptions
are illustrated by sickening engravings of the tortures inflicted. Among
these he gives one illustrating the suspension of a martyr in a pit on the
16th of August, 1633. The victim is swathed in a covering which confines
all parts of the body except one hand with which he can make the signal of
recantation. A post is planted by the side of the pit, with an arm
projecting out over it. The martyr is then drawn up by a rope fastened to
the feet and run over the arm of the post. He is then lowered into the pit
to a depth of five or six feet and there suffered to hang. The suffering
was excruciating. Blood exuded from the mouth and nose, and the sense of
pressure on the brain was fearful. Yet with all this suffering the victim
usually lived eight or nine days. Few could endure this tor