2
Before proceeding to an examinination of the contents of the work before us, I may refer for a moment to the circumstances under which it came to be written.
Dr. Kaempfer who was born at Lemgow in Westphalia in the year 1651, adopted the medical profession and, having gone to Sweden, accepted the post of Secretary to a Swedish Legation proceeding to Persia.
His desire of foreign travel not having been satisfied by his journeys in Russia and Persia, he joined the service of the Dutch East India Company, and sailed from Ormuz in the Persian gulf for Batavia in 1688. He in turn quitted Batavia for Siam and Japan in May 1690, arriving at Nagasaki on the 24th of September of the same year, and remaining in the Japanese dominions until November 1692. The work before us is consequently the result of his industry and observations during a period not exceeding two years and two months, he being then between 39 and 41 years of age. The difficulties he had to encounter were such as to deter most men from attempting to struggle with them, but Dr. Kaempfer’s German laboriousness and perseverance enabled him to bequeath to posterity a result of his twenty-six months’ residence in this empire, the value of which, as a whole, as a historical and scientific record, it would be difficult to exaggerate; and the interest attaching to it is enhanced by the circumstances under which his enquiries were undertaken.
Of the five Books into which Dr. Kaempfer’s History is divided, the First, which includes eleven chapters, after giving an account of the author’s voyage from Batavia to Siam, and of the Siamese court and capital, proceeds to a general statement of the political and geographical features of Japan; of its products, natural history, revenue and system of government, together with some speculations as to the origin of the Japanese race.
Dr. Kaempfer, as I have stated, landed at Nagasaki in September 1690 and was there received with the usual jealous precautions then observed. We were, “he says, no sooner come to an anchor, but we had two Japanese
