heir swords skilfully, their attack was
fearful. Our countrymen when they saw these swordsmen, trembled and
fled. Their fear of the Japanese was fear of the swords. The pirates'
firearms were only guns such as men use in pursuit of game. They did
not range over one hundred paces. But their skill in using their guns
was such that they never missed. We could not defeat them. They rise
early in the morning and take their breakfast kneeling down.
Afterwards their chief ascends an eminence and they gather below to
hear his orders. He tells them off in detachments not exceeding
thirty men, and attaching them to officers, sends them to loot
places. The detachments operate at distances of from five hundred to
a thousand yards, but unite at the sound of a conch.

"To re-enforce a detachment in case of emergency, small sections of
three or four swordsmen move about. At the sight of them our men
flee. Towards dark the detachments return to headquarters and hand in
their loot, never making any concealment. It is then distributed.
They always abduct women, and at night they indulge in drinking and
debauchery. They always advance in single rank at a slow pace, and
thus their extension is miles long. For tens of days they can run
without showing fatigue. In camping, they divide into many companies,
and thus they can make a siege effective. Against our positions they
begin by sending a few men who by swift and deceptive movements cause
our troops to exhaust all their projectiles fruitlessly, and then the
assault is delivered. They are clever in using ambushes, and often
when they seem to be worsted, their hidden forces spring up in our
rear and throw our army into a panic."

There is no reason to doubt the truth of these records, naive as are
some of the descriptions. Unquestionably the Wokou were a terrible
scourge to the Chinese on the eastern littoral.

INTERCOURSE WITH RYUKYU

Japanese annals say that the royal family of Ryukyu was descended
from the hero Minamoto Tametomo who was banished to the island in
1156, and certainly the inhabitants of the archipelago are a race
closely allied to the Japanese. But in 1373, the then ruler, Chuzan,
sent an envoy to the Ming Court and became a tributary of the latter.
In 1416, however, an ambassador from the islands presented himself at
the Muromachi shogunate, and twenty-five years later (1441), the
shogun Yoshinori, just before his death, bestowed Ryukyu on Shimazu
Tadakuni, lord of Sa