was for the purpose of a general taxation, to be levied by appointment of the emperor, for the construction of fortresses.  I entertained them to their satisfaction.  The 4th we had news that the queen of Spain was dead, and that the king was a suitor for the princess Elizabeth of England.  The 6th, a nobleman came to visit our English house, and brought me a present of two great bottles of wine and a basket of pears.  I entertained him as well as I could, and he went away contented.

We had much rain in the morning of the 7th September, accompanied by wind, which increased in force all day, varying between the east and south.  In the night between the 7th and 8th, the wind rose to a tuffoon or storm of such extreme violence as I had never witnessed, neither had the like been experienced in this country during the memory of man.  It overturned above an hundred houses in Firando, and unroofed many others, among which was the house of old king Foyne.  An extensive wall surrounding the house of the young king was blown down, and the boughs and branches of trees were broken off and tossed about with wonderful violence.  The sea raged with such fury, that it undermined a great wharf or quay at the Dutch factory, broke down the stone wall, carried away the landing stairs, sunk and broke to pieces two barks belonging to the Dutch, and forty or fifty other barks, then in the roads, were broken and sunk.  At our house, the newly built wall of our kitchen was broken down by the sea, which likewise flowed into and threw down our oven.  The tiles likewise were blown off from the roofs of our house and kitchen, both of which were partly unroofed.  Our house rocked as if shaken by an earthquake, and we spent the night in extreme fear, either of being buried under the ruins of our factory, or of perishing along with it by fire; for all night long, the barbarous unruly common people ran up and down the streets with lighted firebrands, while the wind carried large pieces of burning wood quite over the tops of the houses, as it whirled up the burning timbers of the several houses previously thrown down, hurling fire through the air in great flakes, very fearful to behold, and threatening an entire conflagration of the town; and I verily believe, if it had not been for the extreme quantity of rain, contrary to the usual nature of tuffoons, that the whole town had been consumed.  This terrible wind and prodigious rain were accompanied the whole night by incessant flashes of lightning and tremendous peals of thunder.  Our ship rode out the gale in the roads, having out five cables and anchors, of which one old cable gave way, but, thanks be to God, no other injury was sustained, except that our long boat and skiff both broke adrift, but were both afterwards recovered.  We afterwards learnt that this tuffoon did more damage at Nangasaki than here at Firando; for it destroyed above twenty Chinese junks, together with the Spanish ship which brought the ambassador from Manilla.