Japan and the Japanese

OFFICIAL EXAMINATIONS. 465
preter "at on the edge of the raised floor, and an inferior officer at
each of the corners of it. On the walls hung irons for securing
prisoners, ropes, and various instruments of punishment. The Russian
prisoners stood in front of the raised floor, the officers in a
line, the sailors behind. The Kurile was seated on the stones. They
underwent a very rigorous and particular examination, all their
answers being written down. The questions related to their birth-
places ; their families (and when it appeared that they came from
different towns, how it happened that they served on board the same
ship) ; the burden and force of their vessel ; their own rank ; their
object ; their route since leaving St. Petersburg, which they were
required to trace on a chart, &c., &c.
Among other things, the governor remarked that Laxman (who
had visited Japan in 1792) wore a long tail, and covered his hair
with flour ;
whereas the prisoners (powder and queues having gone
out of fashion in the interval) had their hair cut short and unpow-
dered and he asked if ;
some change of religion had not taken place
in Russia. When told that in Russia there was no connection
between religion and the way of wearing the hair, the Japanese
laughed, but expressed great surprise that there should not be some
express law on the subject.
Eighteen days after, they had a second examination, on which
occasion a letter, of which the Japanese wanted an interpretation,
was delivered to them. It had been sent on shore from their
ship along with their baggage, expressing a determination to return
to Okhotsk for reinforcements, and never to quit
the coast of Japan
till the prisoners were rescued. This reexamination was continued
for two days, in which many inquiries were made about Chwostoff,
and the papers he had left behind him, one of which was produced.
The Russian prisoners tried to make out that the proceedings of
Chwostoff were without authority from the Russian government ;
but the Japanese evidently did not believe them.
After one or two more examinations they were removed to Mats-
mai, guarded, as before, by soldiers, but furnished with horses, as
well as litters or kangos, on or in which the prisoners were suffered
to ride, the Japanese, however, retaining the end of a rope by which
they were still bound. Near Matsmai, they were shown a bat-
tery, on a high hill, intended to command the harbor, but ill adapted