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sway of a purely Chinese sovereign. Another "Frank" reached China in 1375, accompanying a mission from Sumatra, but with these two exceptions the annals do not tell of any arrivals, or contain any suggestion of intercourse. The explanation seems to be that the Ming rulers, in the opening years of their sway, dealt with adjacent States in a manner not calculated to encourage purely commercial intercourse. The dominant aim of Chinese policy in that era was to convert all neighbouring countries into tributaries. In pursuance of that aim the South seas became the scene of unprecedented naval enterprise. Fleets of war-junks carrying large bodies of troops were despatched under eunuch commanders—notable among whom was the renowned Chêng Ho—against all sea-board States lying southward of China. Thus, during the first thirty-five years of the fifteenth century, the Chinese flag was carried to Cambodia, Malacca, Siam, the Andamans, Ceylon, Java, Borneo, Aden, Jeddah, Madras, Bengal, and other places all of which were induced, either by a display of force or by its actual exercise, to acknowledge China's overlordship and to send tribute-bearing missions to her court from time to time. European vessels had not yet made their appearance in the Indian Ocean or in the seas further east, Vasco da Gama's discovery of the Cape passage being still in the lap of a future nearly a century distant. On the other hand, the trans-Asian