Here the bright little Orientals were more than a nine days' wonder. Few Americans had ever before seen a Japanese. That country was at the time more a "hermit nation" than Korea herself. Whalers and other sailors who had been wrecked on the Japanese coast had been put to cruel deaths. No white men except the Dutch had been permitted to trade with any of the Japanese cities, and the Dutch trade had fallen into decay. Japan seemed as far from our lives as is the planet Mars. But the Japanese whom Captain Jennings had humanely rescued were kindly treated by him, and on the homeward voyage they had endeared themselves to him and his crew. He landed them at San Francisco with very favorable reports of their character, conduct and intelligence. The free-handed miners of that town wanted nothing better than somebody or something to lionize. So for a considerable time the shipwrecked Japanese had the best of everything in San Francisco, until an opportunity arose to send them, fat and happy, back to their own country. A full account of the incident and of the refugees was published in one of the San Francisco papers. It fell into the hands of just one man who was capable of perceiving the momentous possibilities that lay in the occurrence. This man was a commodore in the United States navy; and his name was not Perry, as the reader may at first surmise, but John H. Aulick. He was a Virginian, then in his sixty-second year; he had had a long and very honorable service, and was keen and statesmanlike in his ideas. What Commodore Aulick saw in the incident was this: The kind and friendly reception of the Japanese waifs in America, contrasted with the ordinary treatment of white refugees in Japan, might be taken advantage of to open friendly relations with Japan. To effect this result, a naval expedition should be sent to Japan. If properly conducted, the expedition not only might secure friendly treatment of American whalers on the Japanese coasts, but might open up trade relations with the country which would be highly profitable. Filled with his idea, which was really a great one, Commodore Aulick obtained permission to lay it before the secretary of state, who was none other than Daniel Webster. He had an interview with Mr. Webster at Washington on the 9th day of May, 1851. Webster saw the point at once. At his instance, President Fillmore ordered the navy department to prepare a small expedition for the voyage to Japan; and when the ships were ready--they were headed by the sloop of war _Mississippi_--Commodore Aulick was put in command. He actually sailed on the voyage; but he was entrusted with the task of taking the Brazilian minister as far as Rio Janeiro on the way, and some trouble having arisen with this functionary for which Commodore Aulick was blamed, he was superseded in command of the expedition by Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, in command of the _Hartford_.