His abduction had thrown his family into the greatest distress, and his wife had made a pilgrimage through all Japan, as a sort of penitential offering to the favoring gods. During his absence his business had prospered, and before the departure of the Diana he presented the crew with dresses of silk and cotton wadding, the best to his favorites, the cook being especially remembered. He then begged permission to treat the crew. "Sailors are all alike," he said, "whether Russian or Japanese. They are all fond of a glass; and there is no danger in the harbor of Hakodate." So that night the crew of the Diana enjoyed a genuine sailors' holiday, with a plentiful supply of saki and Japanese tobacco. _THE OPENING OF JAPAN._ On the 8th of July, 1853, the Japanese were treated to a genuine surprise. Off Cape Idsu, the outer extremity of the Bay of Yedo, appeared a squadron of war-vessels bound inward under full sail, in bold disregard of the lines of prohibition which Japan had drawn across the entrance of all her ports. Rounding the high mountains of the promontory of Idsu, by noon the fleet reached Cape Sagami, which forms the dividing line between the outer and inner sections of the Bay of Yedo. Here the shores rose in abrupt bluffs, furrowed by green dells, while in the distance could be seen groves and cultivated fields. From the cape a number of vessels put out to intercept the squadron, but, heedless of these, it kept on through the narrow part of the bay--from five to eight miles wide--and entered the inner bay, which expands to a width of more than fifteen miles. Here the ships dropped anchor within full view of the town of Uragawa, having broken through the invisible bonds which Japan had so long drawn around her coasts. During the period between the release of the Russian captives and the date of this visit various foreign vessels had appeared on the coast of Japan, each with some special excuse for its presence, yet each arbitrarily ordered to leave. One of these, an American trading vessel, the Morrison, had been driven off with musketry and artillery, although she had come to return a number of shipwrecked Japanese. Some naval vessels had entered the Bay of Yedo, but had been met with such vigorous opposition that they made their visits very short, and as late as 1850 the Japanese notified foreign nations that they proposed to maintain their rigorous system of exclusion. No dream came to them of the remarkable change in their policy which a few decades were to bring forth.