The spot selected for the erection of the buildings for the conferences, was on the beach of the village of Yokohama, or compost town, in the small bight of Kawa-saki, and separated from the city of Kanagawa by the little river Kana. This place was quite sheltered by a projecting bluff below. The Japanese, as could be seen through a glass at two and a half miles distant, set to work in the erection of the buildings on shore, with a Babel-like activity; and the ships of the squadron moved in closer and formed a crescent line in their anchorage, agreeably to buoys previously established.
While the buildings were being gotten ready, a number of their fast-sailing, sharp, copperplated and tassel-prowed boats, some quite ornamentally painted, came off and moved round the ships, their inmates not being allowed to come alongside by their government’s cruisers, peering all they could. The sterns of these boats are open, or indented to the distance of a foot or so in their build, they believing, perhaps, that the eddying water at this point serves to propel the craft. The tall, square masts of their boats, when not under sail, rests on a kind of gallows at the stern. At one corner of the stern is an upright bamboo-pole to which, like a tavern-keeper’s sign, is attached by strips, a cotton or provincial flag; if it be a government or customhouse boat, the flag is of white cotton with a horizontal black stripe through the centre of it. On the other corner is a similar arrangement, from which is suspended the universal paper lantern, differing from the Chinese in lifting up, instead of opening out like an umbrella. The rowers of these boats are athletic men, who appear very indifferent to cold, and in the chilliest weather their cotton garments are most epigrammatic in character.
The Japanese officials, or gentlemen, who came off to the ships were politely received and kindly entertained, at which they seemed gratified, and, after the manner of their land, indicated their appreciation by bringing from time to time little presents of lacquered-ware, &c. I don’t remember to have seen anything else but the most quiet and gentle manner in any of these visiters, except in the case of an impertinent little officer of artillery, who it would have been as well to have shown the gangway. This fussy little animal, who rejoiced in a flaming pair of big brocade breeches, being a consumptive, according to the Æsculapian theory of his country, left all “the hair on the top of his head,” which according to our theory is the “place where hair ought to be.” He had, however, the cheroot-cigar-looking tuft of hair laying horizontal, and end pointing forward. This fussy little person pryed into everything about the ship with rude curiosity. He came and went from the cabin without decorum, and examined huffily officers’ state-rooms, without solicitation. The only point of interest in the diminutive animal was, that he appeared to understand quite well, how a howitzer in battery should be worked.