_A._ “To demand liberty of commerce for me and my people.” Waardenaar suspected that the real chief of the expedition was not Stewart, but “the doctor” on board, and that it was a British ship. Hence, on Waardenaar’s report to the governor of Nagasaki, the latter forbade Stewart the coasts of Japan, allowing, him, however, water and provisions. The facts underlying this apparent attempt of the enterprising Yankee to open trade with the United States so early in the history of the country seemed to be these. Captain Stewart, an American in the service of the Dutch East India Company, having made his first voyage from Batavia to Nagasaki in 1797, was sent again the following year, 1798. An earthquake and tidal wave coming on, his ship dragged her anchors and the cargo, consisting chiefly of camphor, was thrown overboard. The vessel would have become a total wreck but for the ingenuity of a native. He “used helps undergirding the ship,” floating her. Then taking her in tow of a big junk, he drew her into a safe quarter. For this, the Japanese was made a two-sworded samurai. Stewart was sent back to Batavia. Thence he fled to Bengal, where he most probably persuaded the English merchants to send him in a ship to Japan with a cargo, to open trade for them under the name of Americans. A few days after Stewart had left, Captain Torry, the accredited agent of the Calcutta Company, came to Nagasaki, to open trade if possible. Torry had sent Stewart before him, the Japanese not daring, he thought, to refuse Englishmen after allowing Americans to trade. Torry was, however, sent away as being in league with Stewart, and left after obtaining a supply of water. In 1807, as Hildreth in his _Japan_, states, the American ship, _Eclipse_, of Boston, chartered at Canton, by the Russian American Company for Kamschatka and the north-west coast of America, entered the harbor of Nagasaki under Russian colors, but could obtain no trade and only provisions and water. The Dutch flag being driven from the ocean, the annual ships from Batavia to Nagasaki in 1799, 1800, 1801, 1802, 1803, and at least one of the pair in 1806, 1807 and 1809, were American bottoms and under the American flag, so that the Japanese became familiar with the _seventeen_-starred flag of the United States of America.