“Our countrymen wish to carry on no commerce with foreign lands, for we know no want of necessary things. Though foreigners are permitted to trade to Nagasaki, even to that harbor only those are admitted with whom we have for a long period maintained relations, and we do not trade with them for the sake of gain, but for other important objects. From the repeated solicitations which you have hitherto made to us, you evidently imagine that the customs of our country resemble those of your own; but you are very wrong in thinking so. In future, it will be better to say no more about a commercial connection.” In all this business the efforts of Kahei had been indefatigable. At first he was treated by his own countrymen with the suspicion and reserve extended to all, even native Japanese, who come from a foreign country. For a long time he was not permitted to visit Golownin. A guard was set over him, and even his friends and relations could not see him except in presence of an imperial soldier. In fact, according to the Japanese laws, as a person just returned from a foreign country, he ought to have been allowed no correspondence at all with his friends. The governor of Hakodate, having a letter for him from his only son, said not a word to him about it, but having sent for him to convey a letter from Golownin on board the “Diana,” while walking up and down the room, threw his son’s letter towards him, as if it had been a piece of waste paper taken out of his sleeve accidentally with the other letter, and then turned his back to give him time to pick it up.[100] Kahei’s abduction had thrown his family into great distress. A celebrated priest, or spirit-medium, at Hakodate, to the question whether he ever would return, had answered, “Kahei will return the ensuing summer, with two of his companions; the remaining two have perished in a foreign land.” This answer was communicated to Golownin, who laughed at it; but when, on Kahei’s return, it appeared that two of his Japanese attendants had actually died, the Japanese believers were greatly edified, and highly indignant at Golownin’s persistence in maintaining that there was more of luck than foresight in the prophecy. Kahei’s wife—another probably than the young female with whom we are already acquainted—in her grief made a vow to go on a pilgrimage through the whole of Japan; and Kahei assured Captain Rikord that scarcely had she returned from her pilgrimage, when she received his letter from Kunashiri, announcing his return.