struction, when all the towns on the sea coast were broken up, in order to prevent the pirate Coxinga from sheltering himself in them.
About this time a learned man, named Yang Kwang-sëen, published a book against the missionaries. He accused them of forming a conspiracy to overturn the government; in order to which, he said, they had introduced a great number of strangers into the empire, and had secured to themselves whole hosts of adherents, who were prepared to aid them in their sinister designs. "In teaching," continued he, "that all mankind descended from Adam, they wish to infer that our princes came originally from Europe, and, their countrymen, as the elder born, have a right to our monarchy." And then, producing the sign of the cross, he exclaimed, "Behold the God of the Europeans, nailed to a cross, for having attempted to make himself king of the Jews; and this is the God they invoke, to favour their design of making themselves masters of China." These sage reasonings had the desired effect with the four regents, who ordered the missionaries to be loaded with chains, and dragged before the tribunals, A.D. 1665. The members of these tribunals declared, "that Schaal and his associates merited the punishment of seducers, who announce to the people a false and pernicious doctrine." After having been threatened with death, they were set at liberty; but the venerable Schaal sunk under his trials, and died A.D. 1666, in the seventy-eighth year of his age.
In addition to these troubles at Peking, the missionaries throughout the provinces were arrested, and three Dominicans, one Franciscan, and twenty-one Jesuits were banished to Canton. Four were still
