Japan and the Japanese

196 JAPAN. A. D. 16201707.
*0rs, but owing, as it would seem, to a deficiency of presents, with
out success. Caron arranged this matter more successfully the next
year. From Jedo to Osaka Haganaar travelled by land, and from
Osaka by water to Firando, where, during his absence, thirteen or
fourteen persons had suffered death because they belonged to Cath-
olic families. He notes that the Japanese whale fishery, for the
season of 1G3G, resulted in the capture of two hundred and seventyfour
whales ; which, however, were much smaller and less fat than
the Greenland whales, and were taken more for food than oil.
Shortly after his return to Firando, news came of an order from
court that all the Portuguese half-castes that is, descendants of
Portuguese by Japanese women should be shipped off with their
wives and'children to Macao.
Returning to Japan a third time, in 1037 in the seventh Dutch
ship which arrived that year Haganaar heard that Admiral Woddell
was at Nagasaki with four richly-laden English ships. They
had been refused entrance into Macao, and had come thence to
Japan, but could not obtain permission to trade, nor even to land.
Six Portuguese galliots had also arrived from Macao with full car-
goes of rich silks, which were sold, however, at little profit. Yet
they were reported to have carried back, in return, two thousand six
hundred chests of silver, or more than three millions of dollars.
To relieve the necessities of the Dutch governor of Formosa, who
was engaged in hostilities with the natives, and had been obliged to
borrow of Chinese traders, at the rate of three per cent, a month,
Haganaar was despatched thither with four ships and four hundred
and fifty chests of silver, of which two hundred had been borrowed
at Miako of Japanese capitalists, at twenty-four per cent, per
annum. The following year he returned to Holland, where he soon
after printed his voyages, and along with them the answers made
by Francis Caron to a series of questions which had been submitted
to him by the director of the Company, and which throw not a little
light upon the condition of Japan at this time.
Caron, born in Holland of French parents, had originally gone to
Japan quite young, Kiimpfer says, as cook of a Dutch ship. Bad
treatment caused him to quit the ship in Japan, where he was presently
taken into the service of the Dutch factory, and taught read-
ing, writing and accounts. He gave evidence of remarkable abili-