ABSTRACT
Nikolai Pavel Krisnits was an Italian in the Russian service who travelled with the embassy of Lev Izmailov to Beijing in 1719–1722 on behalf of the Commerce College to investigate opportunities for increasing trade between Russia and China. The Chinese have no trade with the Japanese, only the islands subject to both trade by sea at the towns called Kangostsiana and Firanda, and these towns are rich in gold and silver. The Japanese know the military arts no better than the Chinese, who are constantly at war, since they have as few as six warships, whereas in past times they had as many as sixty. To maintain the price of furs it is not expedient to send so many to China that the traders in China receive little money for ordinary Siberian squirrel, or white fox or brown fox or good sable.
