y will not look at our _red
Zelas_, blue _byrams_, or _dutties_, being the principal part of what is
now left us; and only some white bastas sell at fourteen or fifteen
masses each. _Cassedys nill, alleias_, broad _pintados_, with spotted,
striped, and checquered stuffs, are most in request, and sell at good
profit. We have also sold nearly half of our Bantam pepper for
sixty-five _masse_ the _pekull_, and all the rest had been gone before
now, had it not been for the war. I am in great hope of procuring trade
into China, through the means of Andrea, the China captain, and his two
brothers, who have undertaken the matter, and have no doubt of being
able to bring it to bear, for three ships to come yearly to a place near
_Lanquin_,[56] to which we may go from hence in three or four days with
a fair wind. Of this I have written at large to the worshipful company,
and also to the lord-treasurer.

[Footnote 56: As Nangasaki is uniformly named _Langasaque_ in this first
English voyage to Japan, I am apt to suspect the _Lanquin_ of the text
may have been Nan-kin.--E.]

Some little sickness with which I have been afflicted is now gone, for
which I thank God. Mr Easton, Mr Nealson, Mr Wickham, and Mr Sayer, have
all been very sick, but are all now well recovered, except Mr Eaton, who
still labours under flux and tertian ague. May God restore his health,
for I cannot too much praise his diligence and pains in the affairs of
the worshipful company. Jacob Speck, who was thought to have been cast
away in a voyage from hence to the Moluccas, is now returned to Firando
in the command of a great ship called the Zelandia, together with a
small pinnace called the Jacatra. The cause of his being so long missing
was, that in going from hence by the eastward of the Philippines, the
way we came, he was unable to fetch the Moluccas, owing to currents and
contrary winds, and was driven to the west of the island of Celebes, and
so passed round it through the straits of Desalon, and back to the
Moluccas. The Chinese complain much against the Hollanders for robbing
and pilfering their junks, of which they are said to have taken and
rifled seven. The emperor of Japan has taken some displeasure against
the Hollanders, having refused a present they lately sent him, and would
not even speak to those who brought it. He did the same in regard to a
present sent by the Portuguese, which came in a great ship from Macao to
Nangasaki. You thought, when he