To land in Japan, to strengthen and comfort the faithful there, or at least to secure the crown of martyrdom in the attempt, long continued an attractive enterprise to the more romantic spirits among the religious orders of the Catholic church. Most of those who undertook this adventure were known to have been seized and executed soon after landing. The last effort of this sort appears to have been made in 1707. From that time, and notwithstanding the great revival, within fifty or sixty years past, of the missionary spirit, Japan has remained even less attempted by missionary than by mercantile enterprise. CHAPTER XXVI _Portuguese Trade to Japan—Dutch Trade—Silver, Gold, and Copper the Chief Articles of Export—Export of Silver prohibited—Chinese Trade—Its Increase after the Accession of the Manchu Dynasty—Chinese Temples at Nagasaki—A Buddhist Doctor from China—Edict on the Subject of Household Worship—Restrictions on the Dutch Trade—Increase in the Number of Chinese Visitors to Nagasaki—Their Objects—Restrictions on the Chinese Trade—The Chinese shut up in a Factory—Trade with Lew Chew [Riūkiū]—A. D. 1542-1690._ Of the real value and extent of the trade which for some ninety years the Portuguese carried on with Japan, and which was brought to a final close in the year 1638, we have no means of forming any very exact estimate. When we read in writers of two or three centuries ago glowing accounts of immense commercial profits, we must also recollect that, compared with the commerce of the present day, the trade upon which these great profits were made was exceedingly limited in amount. For more than half of the above period of ninety years the intercourse of the Portuguese with Japan seems to have been reduced, or nearly so, to a single annual ship, known as the great carac of Macao, sent annually from that city, and laden chiefly with China silks, every Portuguese citizen of Macao having the right, if he chose to exercise it, of putting on board a certain number of packages, as did also the Society of Jesus, which had a college and a commercial agency in that city. Of this traffic the following account is given by Ralph Fitch, an intelligent Englishman, who was in Malacca in the year 1588[127]: “When the Portuguese go from Macao in China to Japan, they carry much white silk, gold, musk, and porcelains, and they bring from thence nothing but silver. They have a great carac, which goeth thither every year, and she bringeth from thence every year about six hundred thousand crusados (not far from as many dollars); and all this silver of Japan, and two hundred thousand crusados more in silver, which they bring yearly out of India, they employ to their advantage in China; and they bring from thence gold, musk, silk, porcelains, and many other things very costly and gilded.”[128]