to infuriate a more peaceably disposed people than the
Chinese.

The Portuguese were the first to come, a ship of those ven-
turesome traders appearing near Canton in 1516. Its reception
was kindly, but when the next year brought eight armed
vessels and an envoy, the friendliness of the Chinese changed
to suspicion which ripened into hostility when the Portuguese
became overbearing and threatening. Violence met with
violence. It is said that armed parties of Portuguese went into
villages and carried off Chinese women. Feuds multiplied and
became more bloody. At Ningpo, the Chinese made awful reprisal
by destroying thirty-five Portuguese ships and killing 800
of their crews. The execution of one or more of the members
of a delegation to Peking brought matters to a crisis, and in
1534, the Portuguese transferred their factories to Macao,
which they have ever since held, though it was not till 1887
that their position there was officially recognized. Portuguese
power has waned and Macao to-day is an unimportant place
politically, but it is significant that this early foreign settlement
in China has been and still is such a moral plague spot that
the Chinese may be pardoned if their first impressions of the
white man were unfavourable.

The Spaniards were the next Europeans with whom the
Chinese came into contact. In this case, however, the contact
was due not so much to the coming of the Spaniards to China
as to their occupation in 1543 of the Philippine Islands, with
which the Chinese had long traded and where they had already
settled in considerable numbers. Mutual jealousies resulted