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Every land battle of the war, except those of the Saghalien campaign, was fought in China, Chinese ports were blockaded, Chinese waters were filled with enemy mines and torpedoes, and the prize was Chinese territory or territory recently taken from her. To deny these facts was impossible; to admit them seemed to involve the disintegration of the empire.
Meanwhile their countrymen were making earnest efforts to obtain their release. Some months after their capture the Diana, now under Captain Rikord, returned to Kunashir, bringing one of the Japanese who had been taken prisoner in the descent on Saghalien. The other had died.
He found that the inhabitants of Shikotan, who had long been supposed to be a remnant of pre-Ainu immigrants, were brought thither from an island called Shimushir in the Kurile group in 1885 by order of the Japanese Government; that they declared themselves to be descended from men of Saghalien; that they spoke nothing but the Ainu language, and that they inhabited pits in winter, as do also the Ainu now living in Saghalien.
He explored the north-east coast of Asia, examined the island of Saghalien, and passed through the strait between it and Japan, often called by his name. In Kamtschatka La Pérouse landed Monsieur Lesseps, who had accompanied the expedition as Russian interpreter, and sent home by him his journals and surveys.
"Their figure," says Kruzenstern, "dress, appearance, and their language, prove that they are the same people, as those of Saghalien; and the captain of the Castricum, when he missed the Straits of La Pérouse, might imagine, as well in Aniwa as in Alkys, that he was but in one island.... The Ainos are rather below the middle stature, being at the most five feet two or four inches high, of a dark, nearly black complexion, with a thick bushy beard, black rough hair, hanging straight down; and excepting in the beard they have the appearance of the Kamtschadales, only that their countenance is much more regular.
He even went so far as to obtain a ministerial order for my banishment to Saghalien and brought it to me to Kajana, declaring that if in one month I did not consent he should allow me to be sent to exile. While I was in Kajana he knew that his secret was safe, therefore by every means in his power he urged me to consent to the odious union.
So, too, among the Ainos of Saghalien a pregnant woman may not spin nor twist ropes for two months before her delivery, because they think that if she did so the child's guts might be entangled like the thread.
In July, after crossing Nadiejeda Strait, between Matona and Rachona, two of the Kurile Islands, Kruzenstern surveyed the eastern coast of Saghalien, in the neighbourhood of Cape Patience, which presented a very picturesque appearance, with the hills clothed with grass and stunted trees and the shores with bushes.
Nor did such an exchange seem unreasonable, for were Russia expelled from the northern part of Saghalien, which commands the estuary of the Amur, her position in Siberia would have been compromised. But Japan's statesmen were not disposed to make any display of territorial aggression.
During his short stay here and at Saghalien, Kruzenstern was able to make some observations on the Ainos, a race which probably occupied the whole of Yezo before the advent of the Japanese, from whom at least from those who have been influenced by intercourse with China they differ entirely.
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