We ascertained from the master’s-mate who had been left in charge of the invalids and coal-shed ashore in February, that a few days after our departure for Japan, the Russian admiral Pontiatine, with the frigate Diana (since lost by an earthquake at Simoda), a corvette, and the steamer Vostock, visited Napa roads, staying some days, during which time he drilled his men ashore, and grazed his cattle. He had not then certain intelligence of England and France having gone to war with his country, but notwithstanding his assurance of the proximity of such a thing, as also of superior English and French naval forces, he generously assisted the English ship Robena (which had been there to bring the successor of Dr. Bettelheim) to get off the reef, taking the while, her cargo of coolies aboard of his own ship. On Sunday, the Rev. E. H. Moreton, the successor of Dr. Bettelheim, a pleasant-voiced little preacher, with mild face and cockney aspiration of the letter _h_, read the English church-service, and delivered a discourse on board of the Mississippi. He had come with his wife and child from England to dwell in Napa, as spiritual teacher to a people who are about as well prepared to receive Christianity, as they were when his predecessor, six years before, went among them. The men and officers of the squadron raised an amount of money for him before leaving. The next Sunday on board, a sermon, blasphemous in character, was preached by a missionary, in which the American commodore was likened to another Jesus Christ, and a parallel deliberately instituted between our Savior’s mission on earth and Commodore Perry’s mission to Japan. That functionary sat on the quarter-deck, meanwhile listening to all this without evincing, so far as any one could perceive, the slightest displeasure. The steamers were coaled from shore by Loo-Chooan junks, during our stay; the gunner of the Mississippi was sent to an island, called Reef island, in a boat, to see whether it was used as a female penal settlement as had been stated; and we saw the Japanese junks departing, bearing away the rice of the island, some to Japan, some to Chapoo in China, where the sons of the wealthy in Loo-Choo are educated without cost. The American opperbevelhebber seems to have had a “would be a nun, and a wouldn’t be a nun” idea of the _status_ of Loo-Choo: In a letter to the secretary of the navy, as found in Senate-Document, No. 34 of the XXXIIID Congress, he first says: “I am constantly obtaining information confirmatory of the opinion that _Loo-Choo_, Meyaco-Sima, and the Oho-Sima islands, are all dependencies of Japan.”