If we allow to the Portuguese an annual average export of half a million of dollars, that will make in ninety years forty-five millions of dollars of silver carried away by the Portuguese; for, according to all accounts, they brought away nothing else. Though the Spaniards were never allowed to trade to Japan, at one period, as we have seen, a considerable number of Japanese junks frequented Manila for the purchase of Chinese goods; but this trade was brought to an end in 1624, in consequence of the facilities which it afforded for the introduction of Catholic priests into Japan. [Illustration: MAP OF FEUDAL JAPAN] The Dutch trade began in 1609. We have seen that in a short time it gained a very considerable extent; and it increased, as the trading establishment which the Dutch gradually obtained in India and Persia, and that on the island of Formosa, whence they had access to China, furnishing them with a supply of rich silks, the great article of import into Japan. As the Portuguese trade was carried on from Macao, so the Dutch trade was carried on, not from Holland, but from Batavia. The year preceding the shutting up of the Dutch in Deshima is stated to have been the most profitable of any. The previous average sales in Japan had been about sixty tons of gold; but that year the Dutch had imported and disposed of goods to the value of eighty tons of gold (that is, three million two hundred thousand dollars, a Dutch ton of gold being one hundred thousand florins, or forty thousand dollars). Among the exports were fourteen hundred chests of silver, each chest containing one thousand taels, or near two million dollars in silver alone[129]. About this time, however, owing to the comparative exhaustion of the silver, or the comparative increase of gold, that metal became a leading, as, indeed, it seems to have been before a considerable article of export with the Dutch. The gold koban, the national coin of the Japanese, weighed at this time forty-seven kanderins, that is, two hundred and seventy-four grains troy, which is sixteen grains more than our present eagle. But, if superior in weight, the koban was inferior in fineness, containing of pure gold only two hundred and twenty-four grains, whereas the eagle contains two hundred and thirty-two grains. It passed in Japan and was purchased by the Dutch for six taels or less in silver, which enabled them to dispose of it to good advantage on the coast of Coromandel, where the relative value of gold was much higher. In the two years, 1670, 1671, more than one hundred thousand koban were exported, at a profit of a million florins; and down to that time the Dutch sent annually to Japan five or six ships a year. In 1644, the export of copper began, and went on gradually increasing. In 1671, an edict was issued, prohibiting the further export of silver; but this gave no concern to the Dutch, who had already ceased to export it. Its principal operation was against