CHAP. XVI.] ARRIVAL AT YOKOHAMA. 621 



CHAPTER XVI. 



Arrival at Yokohama — A Telci^ram sent to Europe — Tlie stranding of thb 

 steamer A. E Xordenslciold — Fetes in Japan — The Minister of Marine, 

 Kawamura — Prince Kito-Shira-Kava — Audience of the Mikado — Graves 

 of the Shoguns— Imperial Garden at Tokio — The Exhibition there — 

 Visit to Euoshima — Japanese manners and customs — -Thunberg and 

 Kaniijfer. 



Yokohama, the first harbour, telegraph station, and commercial 

 town at which the Vega anchored after circumnavigating the 

 north coast of Asia, is one of the Japanese, coast cities which 

 were opened to the commerce of the world after the treaty 

 between the United States of America and Japan negotiated by 

 Commodore Perry.' At this place there was formerly only 

 a little fishing village, whose inhabitants had never seen Europeans 

 and were forbidden under severe punishments from entering into 

 communication or trading with the crews of the foreign vessels 

 that might possibly visit the coast. The former village is 

 now, twenty years later, changed into a town of nearly 70,000 

 inhabitants, and consists not only of Japanese, but also of very 

 fine European houses, shops, hotels, &c. It is also the residence 

 of the governor of Kanagava Ken. It is in communication 

 by rail with the neighbouring capital Tokio, by regular weekly 

 steamship sailings with San Francisco on the one hand, and 

 Hong Kong, India, &c., on the other, and finally by telegraph 

 not only with the principal cities of Japan but also with all the 

 lands that have got entangled in the threads of the world's 

 telegraph net. 



The situation of the town on the western shore of the Yedo 

 or Tokio Bay, which is perhaps rather large for a haven, is not 

 particularly fine. But on sailing in we see in the west, if the 

 weather be fine, Fusiyama's snow-clad, incomparably beautiful 

 volcanic cone raise itself from a cultivated forest-clad region. 

 When one has seen it, he is no longer astonished that the Japanese 

 reproduce with such affection on their varnished wares, porcelain, 

 cloth, paper, sword-ornaments, &c., the form of their highest, 

 stateliest, and also grimmest mountain. For the number of the 

 men who have jDerished by its eruptions is reckoned by hundreds 

 of thousands, and if tradition speaks truth the whole mountain 



1 The Dutch had permission in former times to send some vessels 

 annually to Nagasaki. By Perry's treaty, signed on the 31st March, 1854, 

 Shirnoda and Hakodate were opened to the Americans. Finally, by new 

 treaties with the United States and various European powers, the harbours 

 Kanagava (Yokoliama), Nagasaki, Hakodate, Niigata, Hiogo, and Osaka, 

 were assigned for commerce witli foreigners. 



