CHAPTER I. 

 THE PERIOD OF BEGINNINGS, 1784-1790. 



American commerce with China was the result of influences 

 reaching back over an extensive period. At the very discovery 

 of the New World a connection had existed w T ith the Celestial 

 Empire, for it w T as to find Cathay and the Indies that Columbus 

 sailed westward, and it was partly the belief in a Northwest 

 Passage through the continent to the same countries which led 

 the European explorers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 

 to nose their way along the eastern coast of North America. 

 Still later the English colonists became acquainted with China 

 through the East India Company. Their tea came in the Com 

 pany s ships from Canton by way of Great Britain. Since 1718, 

 ginseng, the drug which formed a large part of the cargoes of 

 the first China ships, had been known to be native to North 

 America, 1 and it is probable that the East India Company had 

 shipped some of it to Canton. 2 The Company may, too, have 

 had some of its Indiamen built in the colonies. 3 



1 A Jesuit, Joseph Francis Lafitare, in 1718 published his &quot;Memoire 

 presente a S. A. R. Mgr. le due d Orleans, regent du royaume de France, 

 concernant la precieuse plante du ginseng, decouverte en Canada.&quot; Paris, 

 1718. Reuben G. Thwaites, &quot;Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents,&quot; 

 Cleveland, c. 1900, 66:333 (Notes); 71:347. See also Justin Winsor, 

 &quot;Narrative and Critical History of America.&quot; Boston and New York, 

 c. 1886. 4:289, 298. 



- William Speer, The Oldest and the Newest Empire, China and the 

 United States, Hartford, 1870, p. 410, says that the East India Company 

 used it as a return cargo to save exports of specie, and speaks of &quot;Agents 

 sent to New England, who induced Indians to search for this medicinal 

 root by rewards of money, whiskey, trinkets, and tobacco.&quot; Hamilton, 

 in his Itinerarium of 1744 (Hamilton s Itinerarium, Albert Bushnell Hart, 

 ed., St. Louis, 1907, p. 4), speaks of having a &quot;curiosity to see a thing 

 [ginseng] which had been so famous.&quot; David MacPherson, Annals of 

 Commerce, London, 1805, 3 : 572 gives among the articles exported in 1770 

 from the American colonies which he regards as including Newfound 

 land, Bahama, and Bermuda 74,604 Ibs. of ginseng valued at 1243.85. 



3 One was built in Danvers, Mass., in 1755, but was never used. J. W. 

 Hanson, History of the Town of Danvers, from its early settlement to 

 the year 1848. Danvers, 1848. George Henry Preble, Notes on Early 

 Ship-building in Massachusetts, communicated to the New England His 

 torical and Genealogical Register, 1871, p. 17. 



