WHAT THEY GAIN BY THE TREATY. 
2BB 
They would also make a list of the articles brought by 
the boys who followed us, count the cost, compare their 
amount with ours and that of the merchant, and then 
receive it in silver dollars. The goods w^ere then de- 
livered to us, and an acknowledgment given to the mer- 
chant to the eftect that the Government owed him an 
itzabu for each dollar that had been paid in. 
As night approached and business was closed for the 
day, all the dollars that had been received were counted 
in the presence of the several officers and spies, boxed 
up carefully, and immediately forwarded to Yeddo, 
where they went into the mint as iizabu only, and came 
out multiplied by three and a fraction. An itzabu for 
every dollar received was then sent back to Si-mo-da, 
and the acknowledgments redeemed. 
Thus it will be seen that if a merchant sold one hun- 
dred itzabu worth of goods, he received his money in 
full, and in good time ; that the Government cleared a 
fraction over sixty-seven cents on every silver dollar that 
entered their ports, and that we and our poor old Uncle 
Samuel were really the only sufferers. For, though one 
hundred dollars was marked on the goods as their price, 
still, it was with the understanding that a dollar, though 
more than three times as heavy, was still only equal to 
an itzabu, and the same goods w'^ould have been sold to 
us at thirty-three dollars, could w^e only have converted 
that weight of silver into its real value equal to one hun- 
dred itzabu. 
“Til tell you what it is,” I remarked to one of the 
officers while paying my first bill; “the first thing you 
know, some American will imitate your die, and come 
