The survey of the anchorage having been completed, Matheson proceeded, on the 31st, to the bay of Shimoda, on the other side of the promontory of Izu, where he spent five days in surveying, and was detained two days longer by the weather. After the second day, he was visited by an interpreter, who understood Dutch, and by two officers from Uraga, apparently spies on each other, to watch his proceedings; and finally an officer of rank, from a town thirteen miles off, came on board. There were three fishing villages at the anchorage, and he landed for a short time, but the Japanese officers followed, begging and entreating him to go on board again. The ship was supplied with plenty of fish, and boats were furnished to tow her out.

In 1850, the Japanese sent to Batavia, in the annual Dutch ship, three American sailors who had been left in 1848 on one of the Kurile Islands, also thirty-one other sailors belonging to the English whaling-ship Edmund, of Robertstown, wrecked on the coast of Yezo. At the same time, probably in consequence of the numerous recent visits to their coasts, the Dutch were requested to give notice to other nations, that although it had been determined, in 1842, to furnish with necessary supplies such foreign vessels as arrived on the coast in distress, this was not to be understood as indicating the least change as to the policy of the rigorous exclusion of foreigners.[111]