About a month before I came to Surunga, being displeased with the Christians, the emperor issued a proclamation commanding that they should all remove immediately, and carry their churches to Nangasaki, a maritime town about eight leagues from Firando, and that no Christian church should be permitted, neither any mass be sung, within ten leagues of his court, on pain of death.  Some time after, twenty-seven natives, men of good fashion, being assembled in an hospital or Christian Leper-house, where they had mass performed, and this coming to the knowledge of the emperor, they were all commanded to be shut up in a house for a night, and to be led to execution next day.  That same evening, another man was committed to the same house for debt, who at his coming was a heathen and quite ignorant of Christ or his holy religion; but, next morning, when the officer called at the door for the Christians to come forth for execution, and those who renounced it to remain behind, this man had been so instructed during the night by the others, that he came resolutely forth along with the rest, and was crucified with them.

We departed from Surunga on the 9th of October, and during our journey towards Miaco we had for the most part much rain, by which the rivers were greatly swelled, and we were forced to stop by the way, so that it was the 16th of October before we got there. Miaco is the largest city in Japan, depending mostly upon trade, and having the chief Fotoqui or temple of the whole empire, which is all built of freestone, and is as long as the western end of St Paul’s in London from the choir; being also as high, arched in the roof and borne upon pillars as that is.  Many bonzes are here in attendance for their maintenance, as priests are among the papists.  They have here an altar, on which the votaries offer rice and small money, called cundrijus, twenty of which are equal to an English shilling, which offerings are applied to the use of the bonzes.  Near this altar is an idol, called Mannada, much resembling that of Dabis formerly mentioned, and like it made of copper, but much higher, as it reaches up to the arched roof.  This Fotoqui was begun to be built by Taicosama, and has since been finished by his son, having been ended only while we were there.  According to report, there were buried within its enclosure the ears and noses of 3000 Coreans, who were massacred at one time; and upon their grave a mount is raised, having a pyramid on its summit, the mount being grown over with grass, and very neatly kept.  The horse that Taicosama last rode upon is kept near this Fotoqui, having never been ridden since, and his hoofs have grown extraordinarily long by age.