In the midst of all these annoyances everything was done with the greatest show of politeness. The emperor’s answer, which Doeff was called upon to assist in translating into Dutch, placed the refusal to receive the ambassador or his presents on the ground that, if they were received, it would be necessary to send back an ambassador with equal presents, to which not only the great poverty of the Japanese was an obstacle, but also the strict law, in force for a hundred and fifty years past, against any Japanese subject or vessel going to foreign countries. It was also stated that Japan had no great wants, and little occasion for foreign productions, of which the Dutch and Chinese already brought as much as was required, and that any considerable trade could only be established by means of an intercourse between foreigners and Japanese, which the laws strictly forbade. The ambassador did not depart without bitter reproaches against Doeff, whom he charged as the author of his miscarriage. He arrived at Okhotsk in May, 1805, afterwards passed over to Sitka, on the American coast, and the next year, having returned again to Okhotsk, despatched two small Russian vessels to make reprisals on the Japanese. They landed on the coast of Sakhalin, in the years 1806 and 1807, plundered a Japanese settlement, loaded their vessels with the booty, carried off several Kurile and two Japanese prisoners, and left behind written notifications, in Russian and French, that this had been done in revenge for the slights put upon Resanoff.[83] In 1805 and 1806, Klaproth, the learned Orientalist, passed some months at Irkutsk, as secretary to a Russian embassy to China. He found the Japanese professorship, established there by Catherine II, filled by a Japanese, who had embraced the Greek religion, and, from him and the books which he furnished, Klaproth acquired such knowledge as he had of the Japanese tongue.