448 EXPEDITION TO JAPAN. 



on the eastern slope of the highest hill, near the fishing village of Shirasawaki on the seashore. 

 It is cultivated in vegetables, principally for tlie consumption of the people of Hakodadi. 

 Onions, a few sweet potatoes and radishes, are the chief products, tlie last of which are a very 

 favorite article of food, and are served up raw, being grated and used as a condiment with fish, 

 and cooked by stewing and boiling. The low isthmus which connects the site of the town with 

 the main land is mostly left rincultivated, although it might be by proper tillage rendered 

 tolerably productive. Further in the interior, the soil is more worked, and large crops are 

 obtained, but with very little profit to the farmer, as the country in that direction is composed 

 of a flat, sandy plain, which can only be made productive by immense labor, and a great 

 expenditure of manure, which is extensively used. 



There are several beautiful copses of pines and maples near the town, some fruit trees and 

 flowering shrubs, and the vegetation upon the lower acclivities of the surrounding hills is 

 vigorous. A large variety of northern plants, birches, spirceas, laburnums, wake-robins, and 

 others clothe the sides, and afford a scant fuel to the poor. 



The inhabitants of Hakodadi and its neighborhood, gaining their livelihood chiefly from 

 commerce and the fisheries, necessarily pay but little attention to agricultural pursuits. They 

 carry on a large trade with the interior of the island of Yesso, with Matsmai, and other of the 

 numerous towns and villages, which are supplied with the various products of Japan by means 

 of the brisk commerce which exists between Hakodadi and the shipping ports on the coasts of 

 Nippon, Sikok, and Kiu-siu. The junks engaged in this shipping trade take from Hakodadi 

 cargoes of dried and salted fish, prepared seaweed, charcoal, deers' horns, timber, and other 

 produce of Yesso, and bring back rice, sugar, tea, various grains, sweet potatoes, tobacco, cloths, 

 silks, porcelain, lacquered ware, cutlery, and whatever else they may need. More than a 

 hundred of the native vessels sailed for different southern ports of the Empire during the short 

 stay of the Commodore, and all had cargoes almost exclusively made up of productions of the sea. 

 They generally travel along the western coast, as being less boisterous, and affording a greater 

 number of safe anchoring places. These junks are all nearly of the same dimensions in burden, 

 corresponding to about a hundred tons of our measurement, and in construction, rig, and 

 equipment, precisely alike. More than a thousand of these vessels are occasionally seen at one 

 time at anchor in the port of Hakodadi. The principal places with which this commerce is 

 carried on are Sado, lying south of Matsmai, Yedo, Yetchigo, Nagasaki or Simonosaki, and with 

 Osaka and Owari. Of the craft in which this commerce is carried on the Commodore has 

 furnished the following account : 



" The ramifications of the laws of Japan leave nothing unnoticed, and it has been more than 

 once remarked, that in no part of the world are the established laws and municipal regulations 

 more thoroughly enforced, and so in respect to the construction of vessels or junks as they are 

 called. The builder is not permitted to deviate from a uniform rule, as well in model, size, rig, 

 as in the interior arrangement. 



"In the time of Kempfer, the authorized dimensions of Japanese merchant vessels were, as 

 he tells us, ' fourteen fathoms long and four fathoms broad,' (length 84 and breadth 24 feet ;) 

 he says nothing of the depth, but from their flatness I should judge that the hold could not 

 exceed six or eight feet under deck. These proportions have not, in all probability, changed for 

 a long period before Kempfer 's book ajjpeared, (which was published in the early part of the 

 last century,) down to the present time. 



