Early Relations hctzvccn the United States and China. 45 



quin" sailed from New York under the same captain June 15, 

 1808, having obtained special exemption from the embargo then 

 existing in the United States, and found that the contract made 

 with the "Hope" had been scrupulously observed. Earlier in 

 the same year another American ship had been at the islands on 

 the same mission and had been wrecked, for one of the sur- 

 vivors was picked up by the "Tonquin" and taken to Canton.'* 

 In May, 1810, the brig "Active" sailed from Salem for the Fiji 

 Islands,^^ the first of a long series of similar voyages from that 

 port.'" The most prosperous years of the South Sea trade were 

 after the War of 181 2. It was then that beche de mer began to 

 form a part of the cargoes, and the supply of sandal wood was 

 not badly depleted before 1820. The two decades after 1790, 

 however, saw its beginning and the marking out of the main 

 lines for its development. 



In addition to trips to the Northwest Coast of America and 

 to the South Seas, the Canton ships took other roundabout 

 routes, many of them opened by the European wars. A map of 

 their voyages would make a network over most of the known 

 globe. The customary route from America was to touch at the 

 Cape Verde Islands, to round the Cape of Good Hope, and then 

 either to keep east until just south of the Straits of Sunda, or 

 to go north to Mauritius, which the French were making a great 

 entrepot for Oriental shipping, and thence to the Straits of Sunda 

 and Canton. ■^^ But this customary route was varied in many 

 ways. The ships often touched at Bombay and Calcutta, at 

 Batavia, at Manila, or went round "New Holland," stopping 

 at times at Botany Bay. Again, some vessels would stop at 

 Amsterdam, at Hamburg, at St. Petersburg, or at Leghorn, 

 either carrying freight there on their return voyage, or touching 



'^ The survivor was Patterson. He gives a narrative of it in A Narra- 

 tive of Adventures and Suflferings of Samuel Patterson, Experienced in 

 the Pacific Ocean, etc., Palmer, 1817, pp. 80 et seq. 



'^ William Leavitt, Materials for the Hist, of Ship Bldg. in Salem, Hist. 

 Cols, of Essex Instit., 7:211, also Osgood and Batchelder, Salem, pp. 

 169 et seq. 



•" Ibid. 



"Delano, Voyages, pp. 200-211, and passim. Cleveland, Voyages of a 

 Merchant Navigator, p. 34. 



