Note 786 — Chapter XI

See Bancroft, Native Races, vol. v, pp. 51–54, where the paper of the Japanese Consul, Mr. Brooks, read before the Californian Academy of Sciences in March, 1875, is cited, detailing forty-one instances in which Japanese junks were cast upon our coast since 1782. Mr. Brooks states that he has a record of over one hundred similar disasters. Whymper, in his Alaska (N. Y. 1869), p. 250, refers to other Japanese wrecks, and especially to one which, after drifting ten months, reached the Sandwich Islands. The Hawaiians, on seeing the crew, said, “It is plain now, we came from Asia.” See also M. de Roquefeuil, Journal d’un Voyage autour du Monde, pendant les annes, 1816–1819; Smith’s Human Species, p. 238.