ture, and it
proved a most effectual method of bringing about recantations. Guysbert
says that he had many friendly conversations with those who had
experienced the torture of the _Fosse_. They solemnly assured him "that
neither the pain caused by burning with fire, nor that caused by any other
kind of torture, deserves to be compared with the agony produced in this
way." Not being able longer to endure the suffering, they had recanted and
been set free. Yet it is told as a miraculous triumph of faith that a
young girl was submitted to this torture, and lived fifteen days without
recanting and at last died.

It is surely not unnatural that human nature should succumb to such
torments. Even the well seasoned nerves of the Jesuit fathers were not
always able to endure to the end. The enemies of the Jesuits delight in
narrating the apostasy of Father Christopher Ferreyra, seventy years old,
a Portuguese missionary and the provincial of the order. He was captured
in Nagasaki, 1633, and was tortured by suspension in the _Fosse_. After
five hours he gave the signal of recantation and was released. He was kept
for some time in prison and compelled to give information concerning the
members of his order in Japan. He was set at liberty and forced to marry,
assuming the Japanese dress and a Japanese name. There was a report set on
foot by the Jesuits that in his old age when on his death-bed he recovered
his courage and declared himself a Christian, whereupon he was immediately
carried off by the Japanese officers to the torture of the _Fosse_, where
he perished a penitent martyr.

It was at this time that the method of trial called _E-fumi_,(214) or
trampling on the cross, was instituted. At first pictures on paper were
used, then slabs of wood were substituted as more durable, and finally in
the year 1660 an engraver of Nagasaki, named Yusa, cast bronze plates from
the metal obtained by despoiling the altars of the churches. These plates
were about five inches long and four inches wide and one inch thick, and
had on them a figure of Christ on the cross. We take from the French
edition of Kaempfer's _History of Japan_(215) an account of what he calls
"this detestable solemnity." It was conducted by an officer called the
_kirishitan bugyo_, or Christian inquisitor, and began on the second day
of the first month. In Nagasaki it was commenced at two different places
at once, and was carried on from house to house until the whole ci