Japan and the Japanese

DISCOVERY BY THE PORTUGUESE. 21
manding the entrances into the Gulf of Cambay, the Persian Gulf
and the Red Sea), along the east coast of Africa by Melinda to
Sofala, opposite the south part of Madagascar. Malacca, near the
extremity of the peninsula of Further India, occupied in 1511, became
the capital of their possessions and conquests in the far
East, and soon rose into a magnificent seat of empire and commerce,
second only to Goa. Among the most valuable dependencies of Malacca,
were the Moluccas or Spice Islands. The islands of Suma-
tra, Java and Borneo,
in the occupation of which the Mahometans
had preceded them, Celebes, Mindanao, and even New Guin-
ea, were coasted, and commercial and political relations established,
to a greater or less degree, with the native chiefs. The coasts of
Pegu, Siam, Cambodia, and the southern parts of China, were visited
as early as 1516 ; but the usual insolence of the Portuguese, in
attempting to establish a fortified post not far from Canton, resulted
in the imprisonment and miserable death of an ambassador of theirs.
then on his way to Pekin, while it gave a new impulse to the suspi-
cious policy of the Chinese, which allowed no intercourse with for-
eigners, and even forbade the Chinese junks to trade to foreign
ports. In spite, however, of this prohibition, numerous Chinese
merchants, self-exiled from home, were established in the principal
trading marts of the south-eastern seas ; and with their aid, and
sometimes that of the corsairs, by whom the coasts of China were
then, as now, greatly infested, and by bribing
the mandarins, a sort
of commerce, a cross between smuggling'and privateering, was carried
on along the Chinese coast. The principal marts of this commerce
were Ningpo (known to the Portuguese as Liampo, on the continent,
opposite the isle of Chusan, in the suburbs of which city the
Portuguese managed to establish a trading settlement) and Sancian,
an island near the entrance of the bay of Canton, where the Chinese
merchants from Canton met the Portuguese traders, who, during a
few months in each year, sojourned there in temporary huts while
the trade was going on. Down, however, to the year 1542, noth-
ing had yet been heard of Japan, beyond Marco Polo's mention and
brief account of it.
The first visit of the Portuguese to Japan is ascribed to that
year, 1542, by Antonio Galvano, in his little book, first published,
after his death, in 1557, containing a brief chronological recital