No commercial ventures to the East Indies were made in colonial days because, in part, of the monopoly of the East India Company, but chiefly because abundant profitable employment for all available capital was found in various trades nearer home. The fact that ships in the China trade very often made cent per cent was, of course, very well known in the colonies, and colonial merchants had a general knowledge of the cargoes suitable for that trade. They knew, for instance, that ginseng, a root growing wild in American forests, was highly valued in China for its supposed medicinal qualities. Accordingly, when the war ended, and American ships were excluded from such a large part of the trade which they had enjoyed in former days, the ship-owners naturally thought of the trade to the Far East. New York and Philadelphia merchants united in fitting out a vessel which they renamed the _Empress of China_. She measured 360 tons, and the chief part of her cargo was ginseng. Sailing from New York on February 22, 1784, with the sea letter noted above for a passport, she arrived at Canton Roads (Macao) on August 23, and she reached home on May 11, 1785. The profit on the venture was $30,000, which, being only a little more than 25 per cent on the investment, was considered small. Other voyages of the period are worth consideration, if only to illustrate the spirit of the ship-owners of the day. The most interesting of the China voyages, in this point of view, was that of the sloop _Experiment_, a vessel with one mast and a capacity for eighty tons of cargo, that was built at Albany for the trade of the Hudson River. Captain Stewart Dean, her master, had served in two privateers during the Revolution. She carried six cannon, with a liberal supply of small arms, and her crew numbered fifteen (one account says twenty), men and boys. "Martial music and the boatswain's whistle were heard on board with all the pomp and circumstance of war." She carried out ginseng and brought back tea and silks, with profit; and what is of more importance, perhaps, in this story is the fact that she made the return voyage in four months and twelve days. The record shows what a fore-and-aft rig can do in a round-the-world voyage. In the same year a Hingham sloop of only forty tons, commanded by a Captain Hallett, sailed from Boston, bound for Canton, but got as far only as the Cape of Good Hope. At that point English ship captains offered Captain Hallett two pounds of good tea for each pound of ginseng he carried, and he was willing to take the profit thus insured rather than risk a longer voyage in the hope of a larger one.