In English Voyages It Appears
As "Seegar," "Segar," And "Sagar."
Formosa was visited in April, northern Japan in May, and the
investigation of the north-eastern coasts of Asia occupied until
October.
A passage in a letter from Laperouse to Fleurieu is worth quoting for
two reasons. It throws some light on the difficulties of navigation in
unknown seas, and upon the commander's severe application to duty; and
it also serves to remind us that Japan, now so potent a factor in the
politics of the East and of the whole Pacific, had not then emerged
from the barbarian exclusiveness towards foreigners, which she
had maintained since Europe commenced to exploit Asia. In the middle of
the seventeenth century she had expelled the Spaniards and the
Portugese with much bloodshed, and had closed her ports to all traders
except the Chinese and the Dutch, who were confined to a prescribed
area at Nagasaki. Intercourse with all other foreign peoples was
strictly forbidden. Even as late as 1842 it was commanded that if any
foreign vessel were driven by distress or tempestuous weather into a
Japanese port, she might only remain so long as was necessary to meet
her wants, and must then depart. Laperouse knew of this jealous
Japanese antipathy to foreign visitors, and, as he explains in the
letter, meant to keep away from the country because of it. He wrote: -
"The part of our voyage between Manilla and Kamchatka will afford you,
I hope, complete satisfaction. It was the newest, the most interesting,
and certainly, from the everlasting fogs which enveloped the land in
the latitudes we traversed, the most difficult.
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