Page 313 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

299.
Such sights, not often viewed by foreigners, contrasted fav-

orably with the familiar Canton landscape. The missionaries
continued upriver until stopped by boats of provincial officials.

The friendly natives who accepted all the tracts offered them

impressed Stevens. He concluded the voyage with optimistic

appraisals of the possibility of future work in the interior

of China.

While Medhurst and Stevens planned more voyages based

on their experiences in the Min Valley, Olyphant & Co. pur­

chased a brig in New York expressly for distributing religious

tracts along the coast. The missionaries undertook a second

voyage, but with Stevens• death in January 1837 the impetus

for such endeavors dissipated. Several American missionaries

did sail on a unique voyage in that year nevertheless. Peter

Parker and S. Wells Williams joined C.W. King of Olyphant &

Co. in an expedition to take several shipwrecked Japanese

sailors back to Japan. The Americans hoped to open communi­

cation with the Japanese for missionary purposes, although

King also had a commercial interest in the venture. Rebuffed

at each place the ship stopped in Japan, the foreigners re­
24
turned to Canton with the Japanese sailors still on board.

1
As the opium crisis developed in the late 1830 s,
voyages along the coast stopped. By then the missionaries be­

gan to realize how little effect the distribution of printed

material actually had. Although printed in Chinese and avidly

24
strong, Story of the American Board, pp. 111-12. Williams,
Middle Kingdom, II, 329-31, describes all the voyages made at this
time.