154 
OSACA. 
Chap. X. 
Russell folly confirms Ksempfer’s account. “ The 
approach to Hiogo is good and easy, the anchor- 
age secure; the navigation to Osaca for cargo- 
boats short and easy also, not more than four or 
five miles from the bay, though some fifteen from 
Hiogo, which is to Osaca what Kanagawa is to 
Yedo. Only this last is a capital filled chiefly with 
Daimios and their retainers — dominant classes, 
which consume much and produce nothing, and 
are decidedly hostile to foreign commerce, as 
diminishing their own share and endangering its 
easy and secure appropriation ; while Osaca is a 
great mercantile centre, situated on a plain inter- 
sected by twenty branches of a river, and spanned 
by innumerable bridges, some of them 300 paces 
across ; with this great advantage (above all others) 
over Yedo, that, although an imperial city, it is 
comparatively free from the two-sworded genera- 
tion of locusts and obstructives. There are a large 
number of Daimios’ residences, occupying more 
than a league of the river’s banks, but I fancy 
these are seldom occupied, or only temporarily, by 
their owners. Immense activity reigns every- 
where ; and although it was difficult to make much 
way in finding out the true prices, with yakoneens 
whose business it was to mislead us and fill their 
own pockets, I saw enough to satisfy myself that, 
if anything like free interchange could once be 
established, this would supply a market more than 
equal in importance to all the other ports com- 
bined.” 
