The
Horses That Accompanied Him For His Own Riding Were Six In Number, And
Were All Richly Caparisoned.
These horses were not tall, but of the size
of our middling nags, short and well knit, small-headed, and very
mettlesome, and in my opinion far excelling the Spanish jennet in spirit
and action.
His palanquin was carried before him, being lined with
crimson velvet, and having six bearers, two and two to carry at a time.
Such excellent order was taken for the passing and providing of these
soldiers, that no person either inhabiting or travelling in the road by
which they passed and lodged, was in any way injured by them, but all of
them were as cheerfully entertained as any other guests, because they
paid for what they had as regularly as any other travellers. Every town
and village on the way being well provided with cooks-shops and
victualling houses, where they could get every thing they had a mind
for, and diet themselves at any sum they pleased, between the value of
an English penny and two shillings. The most generally used article of
food in Japan is rice of different qualities, as with our wheats and
other kinds of grain, the whitest being reckoned the best, and is used
instead of bread, to which they add fresh or salted fish, some pickled
herbs, beans, radishes, and other roots, salted or pickled; wild-fowl,
such as duck, mallard, teal, geese, pheasants, partridges, quails, and
various others, powdered or put up in pickle. They have great abundance
of poultry, as likewise of red and fallow deer, with wild boars, hares,
goats, and kine. They have plenty of cheese, but have no butter, and use
no milk, because they consider it to be of the nature of blood.
They have great abundance of swine. Their wheat is all of the red kind,
and is as good as ours in England, and they plough both with oxen and
horses, as we do. During our residence in Japan, we bought the best hens
and pheasants at three-pence each, large fat pigs for twelve-pence, a
fat hog for five shillings, a good ox, like our Welsh runts, at sixteen
shillings, a goat for three shillings, and rice for a halfpenny the
pound. The ordinary drink of the common people is water, which they
drink warm with their meat, holding it to be a sovereign remedy against
worms in the maw. They have no other drink but what is distilled from
rice, as strong as our brandy, like Canary wine in colour, and not dear:
Yet, after drawing off the best and strongest, they still wring out a
smaller drink, which serves the poorer people who cannot reach the
stronger.
The 30th of August we were furnished with nineteen horses at the charge
of the emperor, to carry up my attendants and the presents going in our
king's name to Surunga. I had a palanquin appointed for my use, and a
led horse, well caparisoned, to ride when I pleased, six men being
appointed to carry my palanquin on plain ground, but where the road grew
hilly, ten were allowed.
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