350 COCHINCHINA. 
Europe, and one or two country ships from India, with as many 
Portugueze from Macao freighted with the refuse of goods 
sent out to the China market, constituted then the extent of 
its trade. But under its present settled government, so fertile 
a country, situated in so fine a climate, will speedily re- 
cover its once flourishing state. What the extent of its com- 
merce was, not many years ago, may partly be collected 
from the accounts of the early European navigators. In the 
extraordinaiy piratical voyage of Mendez Pinto, who sailed 
for India in 1537, an account is given of the proceedings of 
his comrade, Antonio dje Faria, along the coast of Cochin- 
china. " After passing Pulo Campello, an island in fourteen 
" degrees and twenty minutes, they came," says he, " to 
" Pulo Capas, where a fleet of forty great junks of two or 
" three decks a-piece was seen in the river Boralho (Varella 
" in the charts), which Faria had sent to discover ; and after 
" that another fleet, seeming tAVO thousand sail great and 
" small, and a walled town of some ten thousand houses.'" 
In fact, just before the late rebellion in Cochinchina, tAvo 
hundred Chinese junks are said to have traded annually to 
Fai-foo, which in all probability was the walled town of 
Faria. The decline of the Chinese trade and navigation to 
Cochinchina may in part be attributed to the grand change 
which was occasioned in the commercial relations of coun- 
tries situated in the eastern hemisphere by the discovery of 
a passage to them round the Cape of Good Hope ; but it is 
also probable that the operation of another powerful cause 
contributed, in no small degree, to drive the industrious 
Chinese from their ancient channels of trade. The com- 
mander of everv Portugueze, Spanish and D.utch ship, 
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