We have now come to a time when a new channel was opened by which the porcelain and other produce of the Far East could reach Europe. In the year 1517 Fernando Perez D’Andrada sailed from Malacca to the roads of Canton, and the Portuguese not long after established some kind of understanding with the Chinese, which permitted them to trade at that port and at Ningpo. This arrangement, however, lasted but for a short time. Some aggressive proceedings on the part of a new admiral sent out from Portugal aroused the latent hostility of the Ming Government, and the newcomers were before long confined to that ambiguous position at Macao that they occupy to the present day. There does not seem to be any direct evidence that porcelain formed part of the merchandise that they at that time--I mean during the sixteenth century--sent back to Europe; but after the end of the century, when Portugal and her colonies were for a time absorbed in the vast empire ruled by Philip II. of Spain, a considerable amount of the Oriental ware reached the Peninsula by way of ‘the Indies.’ Specimens of this old porcelain, chiefly of the plain white that the Spanish have always preferred, may still be found, it is said, in some of the royal palaces. The Portuguese in some measure took the place of the Arabs, whose shipping they had driven out from the Indian seas, and it was now in their ships that the Chinese porcelain was carried to the markets of India and Persia. But by the end of the sixteenth century the Portuguese, now sailing under the Spanish flag, began to feel the rivalry of a new power that was destined before long to monopolise nearly the whole trade of the Far East. In 1604, three ships bearing an ambassador and his suite arrived at Canton. The Chinese were alarmed at the singular aspect of these new people, ‘with blue eyes, red hair, and feet one cubit and two-tenths long.’ The Dutch, however--for such these newcomers were--effected little by this embassy, and it is indeed difficult to understand, when we read of the troubled relations of foreign nations with the fast sinking Ming rulers in those stormy days, in what manner and by what route the porcelain that was now reaching the markets of India, Persia, and somewhat later, of Europe, in such large quantities, found its way out from China. After the establishment of the new Manchu dynasty in 1644, the three southern provinces, including the ports of the Canton river and of the Fukien coast, long remained in the hands of the native Chinese admiral or pirate, so well known to Europeans as Coxinga, and it was not till some years after the accession of Kang-he that the imperial authority was established in these parts, and the trade road re-opened with the newly rebuilt kilns of King-te-chen.[134]