16 
IN FORBIDDEN SEAS 
century that the Japanese established themselves on 
Yetorup. In 1806-07 the Russians made descents 
on that island, and some fighting took place. In 
1875 all the islands from Yetorup to Kamchatka 
were handed over to Japan in exchange for the 
southern part of Saghalin. Nine years later, in 
1884, the Japanese Government collected together 
all the natives (between sixty and seventy) who were 
left on the former Russian islands, and located them 
in one settlement on the island of Shikotan, lying 
some thirty miles off the extreme east point of 
Yezo. The other natives who were there originally 
had chosen to remove to Russian territory, which 
left the islands between Yetorup and Kamchatka 
without a single inhabitant. 
Some years afterwards Lieutenant Gunji, of the 
Japanese navy, organized a scheme to colonize these 
northern islands, and got together a party of 
emigrants for the purpose. The scheme was of a 
sensational and somewhat romantic character. It 
engaged attention just after Captain Fukushima, of 
the Japanese army, had made his sensational ride 
from Europe across Asia to Vladivostock, and the 
Japanese papers and public were full of the exploit. 
Gunji evidently thought it incumbent on a naval 
man to do something sensational also. The Japanese 
newspapers boomed the scheme for all it was worth. 
The emigrants were not to be taken up in an ordinary 
ship, but were to proceed all the way to their destina¬ 
tion, distant some 1,300 miles, in open row-boats, 
coasting along the shores of Japan, and then make 
their way from island to island, until they reached 
Shumshir, the island nearest to Kamchatka. 
It was a hare-brained enterprise, and doomed to 
