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
