Japan and the Japanese

CAPTIVE SEAMEN. 499
ition was put upon his conduct by the Japanese will presently
appear.
At the very moment that these ships were thus unceremoniously
sent away, eight American sailors were imprisoned in Japan, though
possibly the fact was not then known at Jedo. They had escaped
from the wreck of the whale-ship Lawrence, to one of the Japanese
Kuriles, where they had landed early in June. After an imprisonment
of several months, they were taken to Matsmai, and finally
to
Nagasaki. One of them, in an attempt to escape, was killed. At
last, after seventeen months' confinement, they were given up to the
Dutch at Desima, and sent to Batavia in the ship of 1847. Ac-
cording to an account signed by the mate, and published in the
Serampore Free Press, their usage had been very hard.
On the 28th of July, the day preceding the departure of the two
American ships from the buy of Jedo, two French ships of war, the
frigate Cleopatra, commanded by Admiral Cecille, and a corvette,
on a surveying expedition, entered the harbor of Nagasaki, for
the purpose, as the admiral stated, of letting the Japanese know
that the French, too, hud great ships of war ;
but being surrounded
by boats and refused all intercourse with the shore, they departed
within, twenty-four hours. In consequence of these visits the Dutch
at length communicated to the French and American governments,
copies of the edict of 1843, concerning the return of shipwrecked
Japanese, and surveys of the Japanese coast, already given.
In September, 1848, fifteen foreign seamen arrived at Nagasaki,
forwarded from Matstnai in a Japanese junk, from which they were
carried in close kangos to a temple prepared for their residence, and
iround which a high palisade was erected, no communication with
them being allowed. Indeed, it was not without a good deal of
difficulty that the director of the Dutch factory obtained leave to
send them some articles of food and clothing. As none of the
sailors understood Dutch, the Japanese officers who had them in
charge found it difficult to communicate with them, to aid in
which, the Dutch director was finally called in. Eight of the men,
according to their own account, were Americans, all quite young,
and seven of them Sandwich-Islanders. They stated themselves to
have escaped from the wreck of the American whaler, Ladoga
which, according to their account, had struck a shoai in the Sea of