Note 1 — Chapter XVIII · Commercial and Industrial Prospects.

Curiously enough, American merchants have been equally unsuccessful in other parts of the Far East. Many will remember the failure of Messrs. Oliphant & Co., the great China merchants, agents for the American Board of Missions,1 notwithstanding their desperate effort to retrieve their position by reviving the coolie trade with Perú, and in later days Messrs. Russell & Co. of Hong Kong also came to grief.