try would not be attended
with any risk, provided that the vessels employed were well armed, and
the arrangements were so made as not to excite the jealousy and
suspicion of the natives.

European manufactures would be eagerly purchased by the natives, and
would be paid for in ivory, rough ores, or dollars. Mr. Wyndham, who has
settled at Sooloo, has already sent a vessel to trade on the south-east
side of the island, near Gonong Tabor.

So much for the southern portion of this immense archipelago. We have
still to examine the more northern. Indeed, when we look upon the map,
and see the quantity of territory with which we may eventually find the
means of trading,--the millions who, but for the jealousy of the
governments, would be glad to receive our manufactures,--we are lost in
conjecture as to what extent it might eventually be driven. In the north
we should certainly have more difficulties to contend with; and it will
require that the whole of the naval force in India should be, for a
time, devoted to this object. I believe it is as much from their utter
ignorance of our power, as from any other cause, that we have hitherto
been so unsuccessful at Japan; but the object we have in view may be
effected, provided that a certain degree of the _fortiter in re_ be
combined with the _suaviter in modo_. The Japanese now carry on a large
trade with China, and also a confined trade with the Dutch, to whom they
have allowed a factory upon a small island; but they treat the Dutch
with the greatest indignity, and the Dutch submit to it, and, in so
doing, have rendered the Europeans vile in the estimation of the
Japanese. This is the error which must be destroyed by some means or
other, even if it should be necessary to pick a quarrel with them, as we
have already done with the Chinese. At the same time that I admit the
expediency of so doing, I by no means assert that we shall be altogether
justified.

There is another point worthy of consideration, which is, that a whale
fishery depot might be made with great success in this archipelago, any
where to the southward and eastward; and we might recover a large
portion of that lucrative employment, which, by the means of British
seamen employed in American vessels, has been wrested from us; for
although, at the commencement, the whale fishery from the States was
carried on by Americans only, since it has so enormously increased, at
least two-thirds of the people employed in the