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compatriots at Ningpo, and after the expulsion of the Tsuan-chou colonists, the Portuguese entirely abandoned any recourse to forceful methods, substituting a demeanour of humility and compliance which by some critics is thought to have exercised a not less injurious effect upon the possibility of establishing satisfactory relations with China. Sir John Davis, Governor of Hongkong, writing in 1845 before the immeasurable superiority of the Occidental had come to be regarded as an "eternal verity," said of the Portuguese: "Their early conduct was not calculated to impress the Chinese with any favourable idea of Europeans; and when, in course of time, they came to be competitors with the Dutch and the English, the contest of mercantile avarice tended to place them all in a still worse point of view. To this day the character of the Europeans is represented as that of a race of men intent alone on the gains of commercial traffic and regardless altogether of the means of attainment. Struck by the perpetual hostilities which existed among the foreign adventurers, assimilated in other respects by a close resemblance in their costumes and manners, the Government of the country became disposed to treat them with a degree of jealousy and exclusion which it had not deemed necessary to be exercised towards the more peaceable and well-ordered Arabs, their predecessors." And Dr. Wells Williams adds: "These characteristics of avarice, lawlessness, and power have been the