Japan and the Japanese

EAST COAST OF JESO. 46i
travelled between six and seven hundred miles. The Japanese
stated it at two hundred and fifty-five of their leagues. The route
followed was along the east coast of the island. Every two miles
or so there was a populous village, from all of which extensive fish-
eries were carried on, evidently the great business of the inhabitants.
The fish were caught in great nets, hundreds at once. The
best were of the salmon species, but every kind of marine animal
was eaten. The gathering of seaweeds for food (of the kind called
by the Russians sea-cabbage*) also constituted a considerable
branch of industry. In the northern villages
the inhabitants were
principally native. Kuriles, with a few Japanese officers. Within a
hundred and twenty or thirty miles of Hakodade the villages were
inhabited entirely by Japanese, and were much larger and hand-
somer than those further north, having gardens and orchards, and
distinguished by their scrupulous neatness ; but even the Kurile
inhabitants of Jeso were far superior in civilization and comforts to
those of the more northern islands belonging to Russia.
When first seized by the Japanese, the Russians were bound with
cords, some about the thickness of a finger, and others still smaller.
They were all tied exactly alike (according to the prescribed method
for binding those arrested on criminal charges), the cords for each
having the same number of knots and nooses, and all at equal distances.
There were loops round their breasts and necks ; their
elbows were drawn almost into contact behind their backs, and
their hands were firmly bound together. From these fastenings
proceeded a long cord, the end of which was held by a Japanese,
who, on the slightest attempt to escape, had only to pull it to make
the elbows come in contact with great pain, and so to tighten the
noose about the neck as almost to produce strangulation. Their
legs were also tied together above the ankles and above the knees.
Thus tied, they were conveyed all the way to Hakodade, havin
the choice, for the land part of the route, either to be carried in a
rude sort of palanquin formed of planks, on which they were obliged
to lie flat, or to walk, which they generally preferred as less irksome,
* The English translator of Golownin's narrative mentions a species of
seaweed collected for eating, on the northern coast of Scotland and Ireland,
and there called dhulish, or when boiled, sloak, and which he says answers
exactly to Thunberg's description of the edible fucus of the fapanese.
39*