The chronicles remind us, however, that the Spaniards did not have things all their own way. In the early days, they were at first friendly with the Chinese, and Mexico carried on a flourishing trade with China by way of Manila until the pirate Li Ma Hong raided the Islands. The Spaniards were on good terms with the Japanese until the latter massacred the Jesuit friars in Japan. When the Shogun Iyeyasu expelled the priests he sent away even those who were caring for the lepers, and as a final insult, he sent to Manila three junks loaded with lepers, with a letter to the governor general of the Philippines, in which he said that, as the Spanish friars were so anxious to provide for the poor and needy, he sent him a cargo of men who were in truth sore afflicted. Only the ardent appeals of the friars saved these unfortunates and their contaminated vessels from being sunk in Manila Bay. Finally the governor yielded, and these poor creatures were landed and housed in the leper hospital of San Lazaro, which was then established for their reception and which remains to-day. The Spanish governors were also hampered by the lack of effective support from the older colony of Mexico, which was so much nearer than the home land that they naturally turned to it for aid. One of them wrote pathetically to the King of Spain: "And for the future ... will your Majesty ordain that Mexico shall furnish what pertains to its part. For, if I ask for troops, they send me twenty men, who die before they arrive here, and none are born here. And if I ask for ammunition, they laugh at me and censure me, and say that I ask impossible things. They retain there the freight money and the duties; and if they should send to this state what is yours, your Majesty would have to spend but little from your royal patrimony." The Portuguese were a source of anxiety to the colonists until Portugal fell into the hands of Spain. The Dutch, too, who were growing powerful in the Far East, even took Formosa, which brought them altogether too near, but they were driven out of that island by the great Chinese pirate Koxinga.[13]