The leading circumstances connected with Captain 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 narrator, 'to conceive anything more ludicrous than the manner in which the governor walked. His eyes were cast down and fixed on the earth, and his hands pressed closely against his sides, whilst he proceeded at so slow a pace, that he scarcely moved one foot beyond the other, and kept his feet wide apart. I saluted him after the European fashion, upon which he raised his left hand to his forehead, and bowed his whole body towards the ground.'