the Chinese, who at this time carried on a great trade to Japan. Of the early commercial relations of China and Japan our knowledge is very limited. As the Japanese at an early era, according to their own annals (constructed, it is probable, by Buddhist priests), as early as A. D. 600, had received from China Buddhist missionaries, and through them the language, graphic characters, science, etc., of the Chinese, it would seem probable that some commercial intercourse must have early existed between these two nations. If so, however, the threatened Mongol invasion, towards the end of the thirteenth century, would have been likely to have interrupted it. The native Chinese dynasty, which succeeded after the expulsion of the Mongols, was exceedingly jealous of all strangers and hostile to intercourse with them. No foreign trade was allowed, and every Chinese who left his country incurred a sentence of perpetual banishment. It is true that the Chinese colonists, that had emigrated, perhaps on the invasion of the Mongols, and had settled in the neighboring maritime countries (as others did afterwards on the invasion of the present Manchu dynasty), still contrived to keep up some intercourse with China, while they carried on a vigorous trade with the adjacent islands and countries; but, at the time of the Portuguese discovery, no such trade would seem to have existed with Japan. The Manchu dynasty (the same now reigning), which mounted the throne in 1644, was much less hostile to foreigners; and under their rule the Chinese trade to Japan appears to have rapidly increased. This was partly by vessels direct from China, and partly by the commercial enterprise of the Chinese fugitives who possessed themselves of Formosa, from which, in 1662, they drove out the Dutch, or who had settled elsewhere on the islands and coasts of southeastern Asia. “They come over,” says Kämpfer, “when and with what numbers of people, junks, and goods they pleased. So extensive and advantageous a liberty could not but be very pleasing to them, and put them upon thoughts of a surer establishment, in order to which, and for the free exercise of their religion, they built three temples at Nagasaki, according to the three chief languages spoken by them (those of the northern, middle, and southern provinces), each to be attended by priests of their own nation, to be sent over from China.”[130]