The necessity of visiting Japan on errands of mercy to return these waifs became a frequent one. Reciprocally, the Japanese sent the shipwrecked Americans by the Dutch vessels to Batavia whence they reached the United States. This was the cause of the “_Morrison’s_” visit to the bay of Yedo and to Kagoshima in 1837. This ship, fitly named after the first Protestant English missionary to China, whose grave lies near Roberts in the terraced cemetery at Macao, was despatched by an American mercantile firm. Included among the thirty-eight persons on board were seven Japanese waifs, Rev. Charles Gutzlaff, Dr. S. Wells Williams, Peter Parker, Mr. King, the owner, and Mrs. King. They sailed July 3d. The vessel reached Uraga, bay of Yedo, July 22d, and Kagoshima in Satsuma August 20, but was fired on and driven away. The name of “Morrison Bluff” on the map of Japan is an honor to American Christianity, as it is a shame to Old Japan. The proposition to open commercial relations with the two secluded nations now came definitely before Congress. On February 15th 1845, General Zadoc Pratt, chairman of the select committee on statistics introduced the following resolution in Congress to treat for the opening of Japan and Corea. “Whereas it is important to the general interests of the United States that steady and persevering efforts should be made for the extension of American commerce, connected as that commerce is with the agriculture and manufactures of our country; be it therefore _resolved_, that in furtherance of this object, it is hereby recommended that immediate measures be taken for effecting commercial arrangements with the Empire of Japan and the Kingdom of Corea,[23] for the following among other reasons.” Then follows a memorandum concerning the proposed mission. Captain Mercator Cooper, in the whale ship _Manhattan_, of Sag Harbor, returned twenty-two shipwrecked Japanese early in April 1845, from the island of St. Peters to Uraga in the bay of Yedo, where he lay at anchor four days obtaining books and charts. When the Japanese embassy of 1861 reached New York, one of the first questions asked by them was, “Where is Captain Cooper?” Our government authorized Commodore Biddle, then in command of the East Indian squadron, to visit Japan in the hope of securing a convention. He left Chusan July 7th, and, on the 20th of July 1846, with the ship of the line, _Columbus_, 90 guns, and the sloop of war, _Vincennes_, he anchored off Uraga. Application for trade was made in due form, but the answer given July 28th by the Shō-gun’s deputy who came on board with a suite of eight persons, was a positive refusal. Commodore Biddle being instructed “not to do anything to excite a hostile feeling or distrust of the United States,” sailed away July 29, in obedience to orders.