On the 28th of July, the day preceding the departure of the two American ships from the bay of Yedo, 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, had 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 Matsumae in a Japanese junk, from which they were carried in close kago to a temple prepared for their residence, and around 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 shoal in the Sea of Japan, and gone to pieces. The director wished to send them to Batavia in the annual Dutch vessel, then about to sail, but for this a reference to Yedo was necessary, which would take forty days, much beyond the time fixed by the Japanese rule for the departure of the ship. These facts having been communicated, under date of January 27, 1849, by the Dutch consul at Canton to the American commissioner there, Captain Geisenger, in command on that station, despatched the sloop-of-war “Preble,” Commander Glyn, to Nagasaki, to bring away these sailors. Glyn touched at Lew Chew, where he learned from the Rev. B. J. Bettelheim,[109] a missionary resident there, that very exaggerated reports had reached these islands of chastisement inflicted upon an American officer who had visited Yedo in a “big” ship. The missionary seemed even to think that these reports were not without their influence upon the authorities of Lew Chew, as the cause of a “want of accommodation” exhibited in their conduct towards the “Preble,”—a piece of information which had its influence in leading Captain Glyn to assume a very decided tone in his subsequent intercourse with the authorities of Nagasaki.