I9I0.] DUBOIS— JAPANESE EMBASSY OF i860. 263 



than the envoys found awaiting them as the boat from South Amboy 

 arrived. But the MetropoHtan Hotel was at no time so riotously 

 besieged as was the Continental in Philadelphia. 



Barring the visits to two or three manufacturing establishments, 

 the time was chiefly occupied with social functions, shopping, boat 

 excursions, theaters and in packing the mountainous wares which 

 they had bought and which had also been lavishly bestowed upon 

 them largely for advertising purposes. In time, the envoys and 

 lesser officers acutely discerned that they were being exploited. 

 Many invitations were declined. Finally, so indecorous a pressure 

 was put upon them to visit the opera in spite of their resolute 

 declination that a serious affray was narrowly averted. 



The embassy, having grown weary of their spectacular exploita- 

 tion in New York, resolved to cut Boston and Niagara out of their 

 program and set sail for Japan as soon as possible. They accord- 

 ingly departed by the largest of our naval fleet, the Niagara, on 

 Saturday, June 30, first steaming around the world's wonder, the 

 Great Eastern, which had arrived only two days before and which 

 now succeeded the Japanese as a popular ferment. 



In the retrospect : Those were stirring times. The greatest ship 

 in the world had crossed the Atlantic, Garibaldi had just taken 

 Palermo, Lincoln had been nominated, and the Democratic Party 

 had split into the Douglass and Breckenridge factions. The ocean 

 cable itself was only two years old ; the John Brown insurrection 

 had occurred only nine months before; Mr. Lowe, the aeronaut, was 

 planning a balloon voyage across the Atlantic; and the Prince of 

 Wales was soon to be entertained. 



The New York Tribu'ue gave up two pages of small type to a 

 description of the voyage of the Great Eastern, and Mr. Greeley 

 editorially declared her to be a wonder without much maritime 

 significance for the simple reason that only three or four harbors 

 in the world could receive so huge a ship. The same big-brained, 

 generally level-headed editor was unable to attach any practical im- 

 portance to the visit of the Japanese. He saw through New York 

 eyes and thus rhetorically delivered himself: 



If they [the Japanese] have the acuteness to see, as possibly they have, 

 the uses to which they have been put, to gratify the inordinate vanity, the 



