The merchants of Manila, no less than the monks, still looked with longing eyes in the direction of Japan, anxious to share in its commerce; and Don Rodrigo de Vivero, upon his accession to that government, by way of conciliation discharged from confinement and sent home some two hundred Japanese, whom he found imprisoned there, either by way of retaliation for the confiscation of the “San Philip” and the execution of the Spanish missionaries, or for some other cause. Besides these European rivals, a dangerous competition in the way of trade seems to have been threatened on the part of the Japanese themselves, who appear to have been much more adventurous at this time, whether in point of navigation or the visiting of foreign countries, than the present jealous policy of their government permits. Japanese vessels frequented Manila for the purchase of rich China silks, which formed the chief article of export from Macao to Japan, the policy of China and the relations of Japan towards her not allowing a direct trade. Japanese vessels appeared even in the Pacific Spanish-American ports. It is to this period that the Japanese ascribe the conquest by the king of Satsuma of the Lew Chew Islands; and Macao, Siam, and Annam are enumerated, on Japanese authority, as additional places to which Japanese vessels traded.[69] The Portuguese seem, on the other hand, to have had little left of that courage and spirit by which their forefathers of the preceding century had been so distinguished. The Dutch cruisers in the East Indies proved a great annoyance to them. In 1603 they blockaded Goa, and the same year Hemkirk took the carac of Macao, a prize of fourteen hundred tons, and valued, with her cargo, at several millions of florins. When the Dutch, under Matelief, attacked Malacca, in 1606, the Portuguese were greatly indebted to a small body of Japanese, who formed a part of the garrison, for their success in repelling the assault. On the other hand, in 1608 a large number of Japanese, obliged to winter at Macao, got into collision with the Portuguese authorities of that city, who suspected them of a design to seize the place, and who, in consequence, put a number of them to death. During this and the two preceding years the annual Portuguese carac had been prevented from sailing from Macao by fear of Dutch cruisers; and, with the effect of this interruption of intercourse and of the bad feeling produced by the collision at Macao, still other circumstances coöperated to endanger the Portuguese ascendency.