Japan and the Japanese

INGENUITY OF A JAPANESE FISHERMAN. 447
spoke English, they were not "the English," but of another nation,
and, what was a still more essential point, that they had
nothing to do with the trade, but were merely hired to bring the
goods in order to save them from capture ; as a result of which
explanation it was finally agreed that the Eliza should be considered
as a Dutch ship.
The same vessel and captain returned again the next year ; but
in leaving the harbor for Batavia, loaded with camphor and copper,
she struck a hidden rock, and sunk. The first scheme hit upon for
raising the vessel was to send down divers to discharge the copper ;
but two of them lost their lives from the suffocating effect of the
melting camphor, and this scheme had to be abandoned. Heavily
laden as she was, every effort at raising her proved abortive, till
at last the object was accomplished by a Japanese fisherman, who
volunteered his services. He fastened to each side of the sunken
vessel some fifteen of the Japanese boats used in towing, and a
large Japanese coasting craft to the stern, and, taking advantage of
a stiff breeze and a
spring tide, dragged the sunken vessel from the
rock, and towed her into a spot where, upon the ebbing of the tide,
she could be discharged without difficulty. For this achieve-
ment the fisherman- was raised, by the prince of Fisen, to which
province he belonged, to the rank of a noble, being privileged to
wear two swords, and to take as his insignia or arms a Dutch hat
and two tobacco pipes.
When repaired and reloaded, the Eliza sailed again ; but being
dismasted in a storm, returned to refit, by reason of which she was
detained so long, that the ship of 1799, also under American colors,
and this time it would seem a real American, the Franklin, Captain
Devereux, arrived at Nagasaki, and was nearly loaded before
Captain Stewart was ready to sail. In this ship of 1799 came out,
to be stationed as an officer at the factory, Heer Hendrick Doeff, who
remained there for the next seventeen years, and to whose Recollec
tions of Japan, written in Dutch, and published in Holland it
1835, we are greatly indebted for what we know of the occurrences
in Japan during that period. It was, however, a very unfortunate
circumstance, ten. ling considerably
to diminish the value of bis
book, that all his papers were lost by the foundering of the ship in
tfhich he sailed from Batavia for Holland, in 1819, the crew and