Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/207

Spanish suspicion took another form. It culminated (1603) in an indiscriminate massacre which lasted several days, all the Chinese in the islands, to the number of many thousands, being either put to the sword or sent to the galleys. Nor did the suspicious mood exhaust itself by that savagery. Chinese traders, attracted by the wealth of the "Franks," still visited the islands, whereupon the Spaniards set a limit to their numbers, imposed on each a poll tax amounting to two pounds of modern money and subjected them otherwise to very harsh treatment. Then, in 1662, when the Spaniards believed themselves menaced by an attack from the notorious Chinese pirate Kwok-sing-yu (Koxinga), they adopted the precaution of another massacre of the settlers from the Middle Kingdom, lest these should combine with the pirates. It is not a mere figure of speech to say that such doings furnished an object lesson to Chinese officials. The records show that the system adopted by the latter at Canton for restricting the intercourse between their own people and foreigners, and at Macao for segregating the Portuguese Settlement by building a wall across the neck of the peninsula, were suggested by Chinese who from bitter experience had learned at Manila how obtrusive strangers ought to be treated.

The third to make their entry into the Far-Eastern field were the Dutch (1601). They came fresh from victories over the Spanish in Europe, and the prime purpose of their eastward