There he heard of white, bearded men, provided with arms hurling thunder, who came every year in a great boat to look for wood which they used for dyeing, and carried off the natives to reduce them to a state of slavery. Moncacht-Apé, who was acquainted with the nature of firearms, advised his friends to prepare an ambuscade. The plans which he suggested were a complete success. Several of the aggressors were slain. The Americans at once saw that they were not Europeans. Their clothes were quite different, and their arms more clumsy, while their powder was coarser, and did not carry so far. Everything tended to show they were Japanese, accustomed to make descents upon this coast of America exactly similar to those undertaken by some crews in search of sandal-wood in Melanesia, who seize the blacks whenever they have an opportunity, and give them up to cotton planters under the name of coolies. The narrative of Moncacht-Apé was given in the year 1725, three or four years before the discovery of the Behring Straits, and more than thirty years before European voyages had acquainted us with the north-west of America. The exact details which he gives as to the general direction of the coast, and of its bend at the peninsula of Alaska, are a sure proof of the correctness and truth of this narrative. Thus, however much it may wound European pride, we must acknowledge that Chinese and Japanese Asiatics knew and, in different ways, explored America long before Europeans. V. Nevertheless, these civilized nations, whose ships visited America, do not seem to have founded large settlements, which could become the starting point of a new colony. Had it been so, they would have left more traces of their passage in the language. Now, with the exception of the small Chinese colony of which I have spoken above, there is scarcely one fact of this nature which can be considered as established. Some Californian colonies are mentioned as speaking a Japanese dialect. M. Guillemin Taraire has reproduced this information in reference to a tribe of Santa Barbara; he adds that the language of some others includes Japanese and Chinese words. Unfortunately the researches of M. Pinart, far from confirming these results, only tend to contradict them; we can, therefore, only speak with great reserve upon this point.