The first known entrance of any number of Europeans into Corea was that of Hollanders, belonging to the crew of the Dutch ship Hollandia, which was driven ashore in 1627. In those days [[168]]the Dutch were pushing their adventurous progress in the eastern seas as well as on the American waters. They had forts, trading settlements, or prosperous cities in Java, Sumatra, the Spice Islands, Formosa, and the ports of Southern Japan. The shores of these archipelagoes and continents being then little known, and slightly surveyed, shipwrecks were very frequent. The profits of a prosperous voyage usually repaid all losses of ships, though it is estimated that three out of five were lost. The passage between China and Japan and up the seas south of Corea, has, from ancient times, been difficult, even to a Chinese proverb.
A big, blue-eyed, red-bearded, robust Dutchman, named John Weltevree, whose native town was De Rijp, in North Holland, volunteered on board the Dutch ship Hollandia in 1626, in order to get to Japan. In that wonderful country, during the previous seventeen years, his fellow-countrymen had been trading and making rich fortunes, occasionally fighting on the seas with the Portuguese and other buccaneers of the period.
The good ship, after a long voyage around the Cape of Good Hope, and through the Indian and Chinese Seas, was almost in sight of Japan. Coasting along the Corean shores, Mr. John Weltevree and some companions went ashore to get water, and there were captured by the natives. The Coreans were evidently quite willing to have such a man at hand, for use rather than ornament. After the Japanese invasions a spasm of enterprise in the way of fortification, architecture, and development of their military resources possessed them, and to have a big-nosed and red-bearded foreigner, a genuine “Nam-ban,” or barbarian of the south, was a prize. To both Coreans and Japanese, the Europeans, as coming in ships from the southward, were called “Southerners,” or “Southern savages.” Later on, after learning new lessons in geography, they called them “Westerners,” or “Barbarians from the West.”
Like the black potentates of Africa, who like to possess a white man, believing him to be a “spirit,” or a New Zealand chief, who values the presence of a “paheka Maori” (Englishman), the Coreans of that day considered their western “devil” a piece of property worth many tiger skins. It may be remembered—and the Coreans may have borrowed the idea thence—that the Japanese, then beginning their hermit policy, had also a white foreigner in durance for their benefit. This was the Englishman Will Adams, who had been a pilot on a Dutch ship that sailed from the same [[169]]Texel River. Perhaps the boy Weltevree had seen and talked with the doughty Briton on the wharves of the Dutch port. Adams served the Japanese as interpreter, state adviser, ship architect, mathematician, and in various useful ways, but was never allowed to leave Japan. It is highly probable that the ambassadors from Seoul, while in Yedo, saw Will Adams, since he spent much of his time in public among the officials and people, living there until May, 1620.
The magnates of Seoul probably desired to have a like factotum, and this explains why Weltevree was treated with kindness and comparative honor, though kept as a prisoner. When the Manchius invaded Corea, in 1635, his two companions were killed in the wars, and Weltevree was left alone. Having no one with whom he could converse, he had almost forgotten his native speech, when after twenty-seven years of exile, in the fifty-ninth year of his age, he met some of his fellow-Hollanders and acted as interpreter to the Coreans, under the following circumstances:
In January, 1653, the Dutch ship Sperwer (Sparrowhawk) left Texel Island, bound for Nagasaki. Among the crew was Hendrik Hamel, the supercargo, who afterward became the historian of their adventures. After nearly five months’ voyage, they reached Batavia, June 1st, and Formosa July 16th. From this island they steered for Japan, fortunately meeting no “wild Chinese” or pirates on their course. Off Quelpart Island, a dreadful storm arose, and, being close on a lee shore with death staring all in the face, the captain ordered them “to cut down the mast and go to their prayers.” The ship went to pieces, but thirty-six out of the sixty-four men composing the crew reached the shore alive. The local magistrate, an elder of some seventy years of age, who knew a little Dutch, met them with his retainers, and learned their plight, who they were, and whence they came. The Hollanders were first refreshed with rice-water. The Coreans then collected the pieces of the broken ship, and all they could get from the hulk, and burned them for the sake of the metal. One of the iron articles happened to be a loaded cannon, which went off during the firing. The liquor casks were speedily emptied into the gullets of the wreckers, and the result was a very noisy set of heathen.
The old leader, however, evidently determined to draw the line between virtue and vice somewhere. He had several of the thieves seized and spanked on the spot, while others were bambooed on the soles of their feet, one so severely that his toes dropped off. [[170]]
On October 29th the survivors were brought by the officials to be examined by the interpreter Weltevree. The huge noses, the red beards and white faces were at once recognized by the lone exile as belonging to his own countrymen. Weltevree was very “rusty” in his native language, after twenty-seven years’ nearly complete disuse, but in company with the new arrivals he regained it all in a month.
Of course, the first and last idea of the captives was how to escape. The native fishing-smacks were frequently driven off to Japan, which they knew must be almost in sight. One night they made an attempt to reach the sea-shore. They at first thought they were secure, when the dogs betrayed them by barking and alarming the guards.
It is evident that the European body has an odor entirely distinct from a Mongolian. The Abbé Huc states that even when travelling through Thibet and China, in disguise, the dogs continually barked at him and almost betrayed him, even at night. In travelling, and especially when living in the Japanese city of Fukui, the writer had the same experience. In walking through the city streets at night, even when many hundred yards off, the Japanese dogs would start up barking and run toward him. This occurred repeatedly, when scores of native pedestrians were not noticed by the beasts. The French missionaries in Corea, even in disguise, report the same facts.