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After resting here for an hour, they bound our hands, as they had formerly done, and led us along the sea shore under a strong escort, back to Matsmai. We remarked that the Japanese had stuck little staves in our footprints, wherever we had gone during the night, and we learnt from them that they had never once lost sight of our trail.
She has been laughing and cackling ever since yesterday evening. This letter will go across America, but I shall go probably not across America. Everyone says that the American way is duller and more expensive. To-morrow I shall see Japan, the Island of Matsmai. Now it is twelve o'clock at night. It is dark on the sea, the wind is blowing.
In the place of candles, the old oil lamp went into service again, and the guards once more hung up before our eyes the ropes which they had only a little while before removed. Gradually we observed many other indications that our affairs were again assuming a serious aspect since the commander of Kumachir, who had originally made us prisoners by treachery, arrived in Matsmai.
On the following morning, amid the rejoicing of the inhabitants, we left Matsmai, and after a journey of three days, reached Khakodade, where the Diana soon afterwards arrived, accompanied by a multitude of Japanese boats, tastefully ornamented.
Finally, on the twenty-seventh of September, they took us from Khakodale to Matsmai, the capital of the island, which is situated on the southern coast, where we were immediately immured in a strongly fortified building, which stood on a hill.
The prison to which Golownin and his companions were finally committed had been constructed expressly for their habitation in the town of Matsmai. It was a quadrangular wooden building, 25 paces long, 15 broad, and 12 feet high. Three sides of it were dead-wall, the fourth was formed of strong spars.
Near steep cliffs, and deep ravines, a crowd of people, who had been summoned from the neighboring villages to attend us on our journey back to Matsmai, shook out bundles of straw, which they carried, and set fire to them, so that it was as bright as day.
And so Starbuck found Ahab with a general chart of the oriental archipelagoes spread before him; and another separate one representing the long eastern coasts of the Japanese islands Niphon, Matsmai, and Sikoke.
The incorporated society of the blind alone is affirmed to include 36,000. The country, though lying under the same latitudes as Spain and Italy, is yet very different from them in climate. At Matsmai, for instance, which is on the same parallel as Leghorn, snow falls as abundantly as at St Petersburg, and lies in the valleys from November till April.
On the fourth day after our arrival at Matsmai, the Japanese took us out of our cages, in order, as they told us, to present us to the governor. We went bound in the old way, with soldiers holding the ropes. The road to the fort was through a dirty street, which they had covered with boards, and as it commenced raining, they held umbrellas over our heads.
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