I have parted with Ito finally to-day, with great regret. He has served me faithfully, and on most common topics I can get much more information through him than from any foreigner. I miss him already, though he insisted on packing for me as usual, and put all my things in order. His cleverness is something surprising. He goes to a good, manly master, who will help him to be good and set him a virtuous example, and that is a satisfaction. Before he left he wrote a letter for me to the Governor of Mororan, thanking him on my behalf for the use of the _kuruma_ and other courtesies.
Pleasant Prospects—A Miserable Disappointment—Caught in a Typhoon—A Dense Fog—Alarmist Rumours—A Welcome at Tôkiyô—The Last of the Mutineers.
H. B. M.’s LEGATION, YEDO, _September_ 21.
A PLACID sea, which after much disturbance had sighed itself to rest, and a high, steady barometer promised a fifty hours’ passage to Yokohama, and when Dr. and Mrs. Hepburn and I left Hakodaté, by moonlight, on the night of the 14th, as the only passengers in the _Hiogo Maru_, Captain Moore, her genial, pleasant master, congratulated us on the rapid and delightful passage before us, and we separated at midnight with many projects for pleasant intercourse and occupation.
But a more miserable voyage I never made, and it was not until the afternoon of the 17th that we crawled forth from our cabins to speak to each other. On the second day out, great heat came on with suffocating closeness, the mercury rose to 85°, and in lat. 38° 0′ N. and long. 141° 30′ E. we encountered a “typhoon,” otherwise a “cyclone,” otherwise a “revolving hurricane,” which lasted for twenty-five hours, and “jettisoned” the cargo. Captain Moor has given me a very interesting diagram of it, showing the attempts which he made to avoid its vortex, through which our course would have taken us, and to keep as much outside it as possible. The typhoon was succeeded by a dense fog, so that our fifty-hour passage became seventy-two hours, and we landed at Yokohama near upon midnight of the 17th, to find traces of much disaster, the whole low-lying country flooded, the railway between Yokohama and the capital impassable, great anxiety about the rice crop, the air full of alarmist rumours, and paper money, which was about par when I arrived in May, at a discount of [Picture: Entrance to Shrine of Seventh Shôgun, Shiba, Tôkiyô] 13 per cent! In the early part of this year (1880) it has touched 42 per cent.