eems there were
not a few in the country. However, the magistrates allowed us all a
little guard, and we had a soldier with a kind of halbert, or half-pike,
who stood sentinel at our door, to whom we allowed a pint of rice, and a
little piece of money, about the value of three-pence, per day: so that
our goods were kept very safe.

The fair or mart usually kept in this place had been over some time;
however, we found that there were three or four junks in the river, and
two Japanners, I mean ships from Japan, with goods which they had bought
in China, and were not gone away, having Japanese merchants on shore.

The first thing our old Portuguese pilot did for us was to bring us
acquainted with three missionary Romish priests, who were in the town,
and who had been there some time, converting the people to Christianity;
but we thought they made but poor work of it, and made them but sorry
Christians when they had done. However, that was not our business. One
of these was a Frenchman, whom they called Father Simon; he was a jolly
well-conditioned man, very free in his conversation, not seeming so
serious and grave as the other two did, one of whom was a Portuguese,
and the other a Genoese: but Father Simon was courteous, easy in his
manner, and very agreeable company; the other two were more reserved,
seemed rigid and austere, and applied seriously to the work they came
about, viz. to talk with, and insinuate themselves among the inhabitants
wherever they had opportunity. We often ate and drank with those men;
and though I must confess, the conversion, as they call it, of the
Chinese to Christianity, is so far from the true conversion required to
bring heathen people to the faith of Christ, that it seems to amount to
little more than letting them know the name of Christ, say some prayers
to the Virgin Mary and her Son, in a tongue which they understand not,
and to cross themselves, and the like; yet it must be confessed that
these religious, whom we call missionaries, have a firm belief that
these people should be saved, and that they are the instrument of it;
and, on this account, they undergo not only the fatigue of the voyage,
and hazards of living in such places, but oftentimes death itself, with
the most violent tortures, for the sake of this work: and it would be a
great want of charity in us, whatever opinion we have of the work
itself, and the manner of their doing it, if we should not have a good
opinion of thei