burnt. Those who might be tempted to live in the city amid the ruins,
ran the risk of fire, murder, or starvation. Kamakura, once the
Sh[=o]-gun's seat of authority, was, a level waste of ashes.

Even China, Annam and Korea suffered from the practical dissolution of
society in the island empire; for Japanese pirates ravaged their coasts
to steal, burn and kill. Even as for centuries in Europe, Christian
churches echoed with that prayer in the litanies: "From the fury of the
Norsemen, good Lord, deliver us," so, along large parts of the deserted
coasts of Chinese Asia, the wretched inhabitants besought their gods to
avenge them against the "Wojen." To this day in parts of Honan in China,
mothers frighten their children and warn them to sleep by the fearful
words "The Japanese are coming."


First Coming of Europeans.


This time, then, was that of darkest Japan. Yet the people who lived in
darkness saw great light, and to them that dwelt in the shadow of death,
light sprang up.

When Pope Alexander VI. bisected the known world, assigning the western
half, including America to Spain, and the eastern half, including Asia
and its outlying archipelagos to the Portuguese, the latter sailed and
fought their way around Africa to India, and past the golden Chersonese.
In 1542, exactly fifty years after the discovery of America, Dai Nippon
was reached. Mendez Pinto, on a Chinese pirate junk which had been
driven by a storm away from her companions, set foot upon an island
called Tanégashima. This name among the country folks is still