44 INTRODUCTION, 



tongue, tliat is, as tlie price of saving the lives of Waardenar and the English, that the cargoes 

 of the two ships should he delivered to him, as Dutch factor, in the usual manner ; that he 

 should disjjose of them, and out of the proceeds pay first all that Holland owed the Japanese for 

 the supplies of the last five years. The surplus was to he applied to the purchase of copper, to 

 load the ships as f;xr as possible, tliough the copper was to he estimated at more tlian the usual 

 price to the English purchasers. Finally, it was provided that when the ships reached Batavia 

 and sold the copper, twenty-five thousand rix dollars were to he placed to the personal credit of 

 M. Doeff. On these terms the Dutch director connived at the imposition of a deception upon 

 the Japanese, and successfully managed to secure the silence of such of the interpreters as he 

 could not help trusting with the secret. The ships were loaded and disjiatched as soon as 

 possible, and they certainly encountered no small risk while they remained at Dezima ; for the 

 son of that governor of Nagasaki who killed himself about the affair of the Phaeton was now a 

 man of office and influence at Jcddo, and would undoubtedly have availed himself of the oppor- 

 tunity, had he known it existed, to avenge his father's death. 



Sir Stamford Kaffles is generally supposed by his best friends to have made a mistake in 

 sending these ships. If Doeff had surrendered the factory, the probability is that as soon as 

 the Japanese discovered it to be transferred, and that, too, without consulting them, they would 

 have destroyed Dezima, and put all the English there to death. 



In 1814, however, Eaffies sent Cassa back in one of the ships, (Waardenar was probably too 

 wise to put his neck into the halter again,) when the same stratagem was resorted to, the same 

 commercial profit was secured by the wily Dutchman, and Cassa failed entirely in superseding 

 M. Doeif as director of Dezima. The latter was more than a match for him in the game of 

 cunning and trickery by which each sought to countermine the stratagems of the other. Doeff 

 kept Dezima ; and for a time the flag of Holland floated nowhere else in the world but on that 

 distant spot, where it was unfurled by sufferance only. At last, after the restoration of the house 

 of Orange, and the return of Java to»the Dutch, the old trade was resumed, and Doefi" was 

 succeeded by a new director. 



In 1818, another attempt was made in a little vessel of sixty-five tons, that was commanded 

 by Captain Gordon, of the British navy. She entered the bay of Jeddo, and was immediately 

 surrounded with the usual line of boats. Her rudder was unshipped, and all her arms and 

 ammunition were taken ashore. The interpreters, one of whom spoke Dutch, and one Kussian, 

 and both some English, inquired if the Dutch and English were now friends, and if the vessel 

 belonged to the East India Company? They were c^uite civil, but utterly refused all presents 

 and trade. The last English visit, prior to the time of the United States expedition under 

 Commodore Perry, was in May, 1849. This was made by H. M. S. "Mariner," under Com- 

 mander Matheson. She went to Oragawa, about twenty -"five miles from Jeddo, but nothing of 

 importance resulted from the visit. 



THE RUSSIANS. 



The efforts of Eussia to obtain foothold in Jajmn commenced in the latter part of the last 

 century. Her possessions in Asia, her seizure and occupation of some of the Kurile 

 islands which belonged to Japan, and her small portion of territory in America, in the colony 

 at Sitka, have placed her on every side of the Japanese Empire but the south. She has pursued 

 her policy noiselessly ; possibly meaning at the proper time to make her communications as com- 



