the wind
continuing at S.S.E., it was thought prudent to leave the shore, and stand
off to the eastward, to prevent our being entangled with the land. Nor were
we wrong in our prognostications; for it soon afterward began, and
continued till next day, to blow a heavy gale, accompanied with hazy and
rainy weather. In the morning of the 3d, we found ourselves, by our
reckoning, upward of fifty leagues from the land; which circumstance,
together with the very extraordinary effect of currents we had before
experienced, the late season of the year, the unsettled state of the
weather, and the little likelihood of any change for the better, made
Captain Gore resolve to leave Japan altogether, and prosecute our voyage to
China; hoping, that as the track he meant to pursue had never yet been
explored, he should be able to make amends, by some new discovery, for the
disappointments we had met with on this coast.

If the reader should be of opinion that we quitted this object too hastily,
in addition to the facts already stated it ought to be remarked, that
Kaempfer describes the coast of Japan as the most dangerous in the whole
world;[103] that it would have been equally dangerous, in case of distress,
to run into any of their harbours, where we know, from the best
authorities, that the aversion of the inhabitants to any intercourse with
strangers, has led them to commit the most atrocious barbarities; that our
ships were in a leaky condition, that our sails were worn out, and unable
to withstand, a gale of wind, and that the rigging was so rotten as to
require constant and perpetual repairs.

As the strong currents, which set along the eastern coast of Japan, may be
of dangerous consequence to the navigator, who is not aware of their
extraordinary rapidity, I shall take leave of this island, with a summary
account of their force and direction, as observed by us from the 1st to the
8th of November. On the 1st, at which time we were about eighteen leagues
to the eastward of White Point, the current set N.E. and by N., at the rate
of three miles an hour; on the 2d, as we approached the shore, we found it
continuing in the same direction, but increased its rapidity to five miles
an hour; as we left the shore it again became more moderate, and inclined
to the eastward; on the 3d, at the distance of sixty leagues, it set to the
E.N.E., three miles an hour; on the 4th and 5th, it turned to the
southward, and at one hundred and twenty l