Japan and the Japanese

VOYAGE OF THE MORRISON. 491
The same year in which Siebold was released, a party of English
convicts, on their way to Australia in the brig Cyprus, mutinied
and got possession of the vessel. After cruising about for five
months, being in great distress for wood and water, they anchored
on the coast of Japan ; but they were fired at from the shore, and
obliged to depart without accomplishing their object.
Not long after this occurrence, three Japanese, the only survi-
vors of the crew of a junk, driven by storms across the Pacific,
landed on Queen Charlotte's Island, on the north-west coast of
America. They were seized by the natives, but were redeemed by
an agent of the English Fur Company at the mouth of Columbia
rirer, and sent to England. From England they were carried to
Macao, where they were placed in the family of Mr. Gutzlaff, the
missionary. Some time after, four other Japanese, who had been
wrecked on the Philippines, were brought to Macao.
The return of these men to their homes seemed a good opportu
nity for opening a communication with Japan, as well for mercantile
as for missionary purposes, and an American mercantile house
at Macao fitted out the brig Morrison for that purpose, in which
sailed one of the partners, Dr. Parker, a missionary physician, and
Mr. S. W. Williams, one of the editors of the Chinese Repository,
and afterwards Chinese interpreter to Commodore Perry's squad
ron. At Lew Chew, where the vessel touched, Mr. Gutzlaff also
came on board.
on Japan, principally Fisscher's, Meylan's, and Siebold's, appeared in the
Asiatic Journal, during the years 1839 and 1840, and were afterwards col
lected and published at London in a volume, and reprinted in Harper's Fam-
ily Library, with the title of Manners and Customs of the Japanese in the
Nineteenth Century. The same numbers, to which some others were subsequently
added in the Asiatic Journal, were reprinted in the Chinese Re-
pository, with notes, derived from the information given to the editor by the
shipwrecked Japanese, whom, as mentioned above, it was attempted to carry
home in the Morrison. In the index to the Chinese Repository these num
bers are ascribed to a lady, a Sirs. B.
A still more elaborate and comprehensive work, based mainly on the same
materials, and often drawing largely from the one above referred to, but
rendered more complete by extracts from Kampfer and Ihunberg, is De
Jancigny's "J;ip:in,'' published at Paris, in 1850, as a part of the great French
collection, entitled L'univcrs, ou Histoire et Description de tout les Peuples.
Neither of these works contains any account of the Portuguese missiona.