aptain Golownin's captivity
were the following:--In the year 1803, the Chamberlain Resanoff was
sent by the Emperor Alexander, to endeavour to open friendly relations
with Japan, and sailed from the eastern coasts in a merchant vessel
belonging to the American Company. But receiving a peremptory message
of dismissal, and refusal of all intercourse, he returned to Okhotsk,
and died on his way to St Petersburg. Lieutenant Chwostoff, however,
who had commanded the vessel, put to sea again on his own
responsibility, attacked and destroyed several Japanese villages on
the Kurile Islands, and carried off some of the inhabitants. In the
year 1811, Captain Golownin, commander of the imperial war-sloop
_Diana_, lying at Kamtschatka, received orders from head-quarters to
make a particular survey of the southern Kurile Islands, and the coast
of Tartary. In pursuance of his instructions, he was sailing without
any flag near the coast of Eetooroop (Staaten), when he was met by
some Russian Kuriles, who informed him that they had been seized, and
were still detained prisoners, on account of the Chwostoff outrage.
They persuaded the captain to take one of them on board as an
interpreter, and proceed to Kunashir, to make such explanations as
might exonerate the Russian government in this matter. The Japanese
chief of the island further assured the Russians, that they could
obtain a supply of wood, water, and fresh provisions at Kunashir; and
he furnished them with a letter to its governor. The reception of the
_Diana_ at Kunashir was, in the first instance, a vigorous but
ineffective discharge of guns from the fortress, the walls of which
were so completely hung with striped cloth, that it was impossible to
form any opinion of the size or strength of the place. After some
interchange, however, of allegorical messages, conveyed by means of
drawings floated in empty casks, Golownin was invited on shore by the
beckoning of white fans. Concealing three brace of pistols in his
bosom, and leaving a well-armed boat close to the shore, with orders
that the men should watch his movements, and act on his slightest
signal, he ventured on a landing, accompanied by the Kurile Alexei and
a common sailor. The lieutenant-governor soon appeared. He was in
complete armour, and attended by two soldiers, one of whom carried his
long spear, and the other his cap or helmet, which was adorned with a
figure of the moon. 'It is scarcely possible,' says the narr