1850.
Notice of Japan in the Hái-kwok Tú Chí.
155
These pirates kidnapped our people to show them the road, and to procure water for them, and as the latter went out in the morning and came home at night, they called the roll of their names. At (or for) every place, a register was kept in which they inserted their names and surnames, and they divided them into classes, according to which they told them off and inspected them.
There were but sew native Japanese amongst them; not above some tens, of whom they formed the van. When the pirates returned to the island to which they belonged, they used to give out that they had come home from trading, and they never divulged aught concern- ing their comrades whom our troops had captured or slain, so that their neighbors knew nothing of it, but on the contrary offered them their congratulations.
Another Extract from the Art of War, not published in the first Edition of the Hải kzoh Tủ Chi.
The Japanese do not construct their vessels in the same manner as the Chinese. They require beams of a large size and square, in fitting the seams of which they use no nails, but band them together with iron plates. Neither do they make use of hempen rope or wood oil în closing the crevices, but stop the leaks with sedge grass. Their ships cost much pains and money, and without a large capital it is not easy to build them. The pirates who attacked China were every one of thein poor people from the islands, and what has been said in times past about the hundreds and thousands of ships built by Japan is an idle tradition. Their largest craft may carry three hundred meu; the middle class, one or two hundred; and the smallest from fifty to eighty. They are of a low and narrow build, and find it difficult to hold their own with such large vessels as they fall in with, and they are poorly off when they ground in the mud. For this cause, our vessels from Kwangtung and Fuhkion are much feared by them; and particularly those of the former province, as their sides are perpendicular like a wall. Their ship's bottoms are flat, and can not easily cut the waves. Their canvas sails are set with the mast right in the middle, and not one side of it as in China, and both their masts and sails shift about. and are not made fast like those of the Chinese; hence they can only carry on with a fair breeze, and if they meet with a calm or a contrary wind, they unship the mast and work the long stern scull; they can not handle the oar. Their vessels could not [formerly] cross from Japan in less than a month, and if they now perform the voyage with greater ease it is because of the treachery of certain of the inhabitants of the coast of Fulkien who bought ships in the outer waters, and when they