Father Xavier was not content to have fortified the missioners, both by word and writing, in his own person; he desired of Father Ignatius, that he would also encourage them with his epistles, and, principally, that he would have the goodness to write to Henry Henriquez, a man mortified to the world, and laborious in his ministry.

Having ordered all things in the coast of Fishery, he returned by Cochin, where he staid two months; employing himself, without ceasing, in the instruction of little children, administering to the sick, and regulating the manners of that town.  After which he went to Bazain, there to speak with the deputy-governor of the Indies, Don Garcia de Saa, whom Don John de Castro had named, upon his death-bed, to supply his place.  The Father was desirous to obtain his letters of recommendation to the governor of Malacca, that, in virtue of them, his passage to Japan might be made more easy.

It is true, the news he received, that the Chinese, ill satisfied with the Portuguese, had turned them out of their country, seemed to have broken all his measures, because it was impossible to arrive at the isles of Japan, by the way of Malacca, without touching at some port of China; but it is the property of apostolical zeal, to make no account of those seeming impossibilities, which appear in the greatest undertakings.

When Xavier was come back to Goa, and it was known that he designed a voyage to Japan, his friends made use of all their endeavours to divert him from it.  They first set before him the length of the way, which was thirteen hundred leagues; the certain and inevitable dangers to which he must expose his life, not only by reason of pirates, which continually infest those seas, and murder all who come into their hands, but also for the rocks, unknown to the most skilful pilots, and of certain winds called Typhons, which reign from China even to Japan, in a vast extent of sea.  They said, “That those impetuous hurricanes were used to whirl a vessel round, and founder it at the same moment; or else drive it with fury against the rocks, and split it in a thousand pieces.”  They added, “If, by miracle, he should happen to escape the pirates, and avoid the tempests, yet he could promise no manner of safety to himself in the ports of China, from whence the Portuguese were expelled; and, for what remained, if he were possessed with an unsatiable zeal, there were other vast kingdoms of the East, where the light of the gospel had not shone; that even in the neighbourhood of Goa there were isles remaining, and territories, of idolaters:  that he might go thither in God’s name, and leave the thoughts of those remote islands, which nature seemed to have divided from the commerce of mortals; and where the power of the Portuguese not being established, Christianity could not be able to maintain itself against the persecution of the Pagans.”