insignificant. The total value of the two cargoes was estimated not to exceed £70,000, and the profits must have been small after the presents, tribute and fees were deducted. When the ships were ready to sail on their return voyage the president had to wait upon the governor of the province in formal audience to obtain permission, at which time he was required to sign a document that they would neither bring in nor hold any intercourse with the Portuguese and would advise the authorities of any hostile designs against Japan which came to their knowledge.

No direct intercourse was held with the government of the Netherlands, except through the Dutch East India Company at Batavia. On the arrival of each ship presents had to be given to the governor of the province; and a visit and tribute paid to the Shogun at his capital, Yedo, at first every year, but during the last century the visit was made once in four years, though the tribute continued to be sent annually. The Japanese nobility and higher authorities affected a great contempt for trade, and it was their practice to hold no direct intercourse with the Dutch officials. Though many of the factory presidents familiarized themselves with the language, they never could address the higher authorities directly. In his intercourse with the president the governor spoke to his secretary, the secretary repeated his words to the interpreter (a Japanese), and the latter translated it to the president; and the president's answer came back through the same current of communication.

The visit of ceremony of the president of the factory

to the Shogun was made in great state. Two other Dutchmen and a number of Japanese officials accompanied him, and the entire retinue consisted of about two hundred persons. They visited on their journey the local princes, with whom they exchanged presents. On the arrival of the embassy at Yedo they were kept in strict confinement, and permitted to go out only on visits of ceremony. The audience of the Shogun was in the following form. When the president entered the hall of audience, they cried out "Holanda Capitan," which was the signal for him to draw near and make his obeisance. Accordingly, he crawled on his hands and knees to a place indicated, between the presents he had brought ranged on one side and the place where the Shogun sat on the other; and then, kneeling, he bowed his forehead quite down to the ground, and so crawled backwards like a crab, without uttering a single word. The stillness of death prevailed during the audience, which lasted scarcely sixty seconds. The Dutch chronicler's comment is: "So mean and short a thing is the audience we have of this mighty monarch." Although cut off from the outside world, Japanese commerce did not languish. Kaempfer, writing in 1692, says that confined within the limits of their empire the people enjoyed the blessings of peace and contentment, and did not care for any commerce or communication with foreign parts, because such was the state of their country they could subsist without it.

1

11 History of Japan, Kaempfer. An account of the Dutch factory at Deshima, taken from Kaempfer and other Dutch and German authorities, will be found in 9 Chinese Repository, 291.

"How much," he remarks, "is carried on between the several provinces and parts of the empire! how busy and industrious the merchants are everywhere; how full their ports of ships; how many rich and mercantile towns up and down the country! There are such multitudes of people along the coasts, and near the seaports, such a noise of oars and sails, and numbers of ships and boats!" One of the presidents of the Dutch factory, in giving an account of his visit to the Shogun, states that there were as many as a thousand vessels in the bay of Yedo.

The measures of exclusion adopted had the effect to deter the European nations from further attempts at intercourse, either commercial or political, with Japan, but not so as to China. The trade of that vast empire was greatly coveted, and the profits which were derived from the limited commerce through Canton, even with its burdensome conditions, only whetted the appetite of the avaricious merchants for greater facilities. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries repeated attempts were made by the governments of Portugal, Holland, Great Britain, and Russia, by imposing embassies sent to Peking, to secure greater trade privileges. The embassies of the first three governments were invariably attended with failure.1 Russia, however, occupied a different relation. She was not seeking for maritime intercourse. Her vessels of war did not come into Chinese waters to awaken alarm and commit out

1 As to Portuguese embassies, 2 Hist. China, Gutzlaff, 129, 137, 139; as to Dutch embassies, 2 Hist. China, Gutzlaff, 152, 159; as to early European embassies, China, by R. Montgomery Martin, London, 1847, p. 257.

rages. Her commerce had to be established over a long land route. Besides, Russia had become a coterminous neighbor of China, and it was necessary to establish some kind of political relations. By 1637 the Cossacks had advanced across Siberia and stood on the shores of the Pacific at the Sea of Okhotsk. The Amur River had become a part of the boundary, and Mongolia and Manchuria touched the Russian frontier. The aggressive spirit of the Czar's representatives soon brought them into conflict with the Chinese, resulting in a state of war, in which the Russians were worsted and sought for a peaceful adjustment. This brought about the treaty of Nipchu or Neverchinsk, signed in 1689; and as it was the first treaty negotiated by the emperor of China upon terms of equality with a European power, it calls for more than a passing notice.

The negotiations took place on the frontier, and in the presence of the armies of both contestants. The Chinese plenipotentiaries were accompanied by two Catholic missionaries, who acted both as advisers and interpreters, and exercised an important influence on the result. The negotiations were quite prolonged, each party indulging in very wordy discussions. The final scene of the signature of the treaty was enacted in a tent erected for the ceremony, midway between the two armies. The treaty was read aloud, and each party signed and sealed the two copies that were to be delivered to the other, viz., by the Chinese, one in their own language, and a second in Latin; by the Russians, one in their language, and a second in Latin; but the Latin copies only were sealed with the seals of both

nations. The contracting parties, as described by the priest Gerbillon, then "rising altogether and holding each the copies of the treaty of peace, swore in the name of their masters to observe them faithfully, taking Almighty God, the sovereign Lord of all things, to witness the sincerity of their intentions." The exchange of copies of the treaty followed, and the parties embraced each other, trumpets, drums, fifes, and hautboys sounding all the while. On the next day presents were exchanged and the plenipotentiaries separated, bearing their respective copies of the treaties to their sovereigns.

The treaty fixed the boundaries of the two countries, Russia agreed to withdraw from the Chinese territory which it had occupied for some years, free trade across the frontier was stipulated, and provision was made for the extradition of criminals and fugitives. The Chinese emperor then reigning was Kang-he, one of the most celebrated of the Manchu dynasty. He took great credit to himself for the treaty, saying of his reign, "Since I ascended the throne I have directed military operations to a great extent. I have crushed rebels, I have taken possession of Formosa, I have humbled the Russians."1

The exchange of ratifications of this treaty did not take place till four years after its signature, when Peter the Great sent an envoy to Peking attended by a large

1 Déscription de l'Empire de la Chine, etc., par J. B. du Haldè, 1735. For text of treaty, Treaties, Conventions, etc., between China and Foreign Courts, prepared by Inspector-General of Customs, Shanghai, 1887, p. 3; also Archives Diplomatiques, Paris, t. i. p. 270; 2 Hist. China, Gutzlaff, 247; 8 Chinese Repository, 417.