They saw the smoke of several towns, and many houses near the shore, in pleasant and cultivated situations.

They stood off and on, according as the weather permitted them, till the 28th in the afternoon, when they lost sight of the land, and from its breaking off so suddenly, they conjectured that what they had before seen was a cluster of islands, lying off the main land of Japan.

The next day they saw land again, eleven leagues to the southward.

The coast appeared straight and unbroken; towards the sea it was low, but rose gradually into hills of a moderate height, whose tops were tolerably even, and covered with wood.
At nine o'clock, the wind shifting to the southward, they tacked and stood off to the east, and soon after they saw a vessel close in with the land, standing along shore to the northward, and another in the offing, coming down before the wind.

Objects of any kind, belonging to a country so famous and yet so little known, excited a general curiosity, and every soul on board was upon deck in an instant, to gaze at them.