The captain made a suitable reply, and the company all stood up and drank his health.
One more night on the ship; and the next morning we sighted land and passed along near it for forty miles. It was a rough country, evidently of volcanic formation, and not so thickly populated as I expected to see, considering that there are thirty-eight million people in Japan. At last we cast anchor in the splendid harbor of Yokohama, one of the most commodious and beautiful in the world, where a tug took us off the ship. We were detained an hour or two at the custom-house, and then each took a _jinrickisha_, a low, two-wheeled chaise with a man between the shafts, who trotted up to the "Grand," the most perfect of hotels. We went directly to our rooms, which had been previously engaged.
The Grand Hotel, where I am located, is very large and first-class in all respects. It is two hundred feet long, fronting the matchless bay, with an extension along a canal of two hundred feet.
From the room I occupy, I look down upon the canal and a fine bridge which spans it. Across this bridge goes a constant procession of men, women, and children, some horses and carriages, and occasionally a single ox drawing a cart. But every thing looks so different, and is managed so differently from what one has been accustomed to, that I am more and more impressed with the idea that I am no longer in this world, but in some wonderland beyond the stars.
The view of the bay from the front of the hotel is said to be, by some, the finest in the world. The harbor is very large, and could float all the navies of all nations. At anchor, in different directions, are iron-clad war-ships, English, French, German, Italian, Russian, and Japanese,--only one showing the stars and stripes, the _St. Mary_, an old side-wheel boat, about as large as a Brooklyn ferry-boat, and of course about as useless.
One of the naval vessels flying the British flag is an immense iron-clad of six thousand tons. With the commander, Captain May, I became acquainted. He has on board an Armstrong gun of one hundred and twenty tons, the largest I think ever made, which will throw a bolt of half a ton a dozen miles, and penetrate through a wrought-iron plate twelve inches thick.