The boy travellers in the Far East : adventures of two youths ... - Library

THE DUTCH IN JAPAN. 309
A PATH NUAR NAGASAKI.
inons, and thus tlieir jonrnej' did not afford them many glimpses of the
country. There is a tradition that they were required to go through tlie
ceremony of trampling on the cross in the presence of the Tycoon, and
also to intoxicate themselves, as a warning to the Japanese to shun the
wicked waj'S of the foreigners. Whether either account be true I am un-
able to say ; the assertion is very positively made and as positively denied,
and therefore I will leave every reader, who has paid his money for the
book, to make choice of the side of the story which suits him best.
The first move of our friends on landing was to go to Deshima, as they
had a curiosity to see the little island, which was so famous in the history
of the foreign relations of Japan with the outer world. The drawbridge
leading to the island, and the box where the Japanese sentries stood, were
still there, and so were some of the buildings which the Dutch inhabited ;
but the Dutch were gone, and probably forever. Outside of the historical
interest there was notliing remarkable about the island, and the boys won-
dered how men could voluntarily shut themselves up in a prison like this.
Only one ship a year was allowed to come to them, and sometimes, during