ABSTRACT
After being shipwrecked and held captive in Kamchatka for almost a year, the merchant’s clerk Denbei was rescued by Vladimir Atlasov in 1699. He was received by Peter the Great, who took considerable interest in his welfare and ordered that Denbei should be taught Russian with a view to taking on Russian students of the Japanese language. Denbei was baptised into the Russian Orthodox Church under the name of Gavriil Bogdanov, and from 1707 he lived in the household of the governor of Siberia, Matvei Gagarin. Denbei lived on the Kamchatka river almost a year until the arrival of Volodimer Otlasov and his companions. Of the towns of Batavia, Formosa and Canton Denbei knows and has heard nothing. There are no Jesuits or German priests in Japanese towns, but he does not know whether there are any in the town of Nagasaki.
