“Two audiences a week were held, at which the same programme was performed as related above, except that we fared more luxuriously.[122] Becoming better acquainted with our taste, they feasted us with a broth made of fish, boiled shrimps, hard-boiled eggs, and very good raw oysters. At one of the interviews (March 13), the presents from our government were delivered. They consisted of cloths, agricultural implements, fire-arms, etc., and a beautiful locomotive, tender, and passenger-car, one-fourth the ordinary size, which we put in motion on a circular track, at the rate of twenty miles an hour. A mile of magnetic telegraph was also erected on shore, and put in operation. The Japanese were more interested in it than anything else, but never manifested any wonder. So capable are they of concealing and controlling their feelings, that they would examine the guns, machinery, etc., of the steamers, without expressing the slightest astonishment. They are a much finer-looking race than the Chinese—intelligent, polite, and hospitable, but proud, licentious, unforgiving, and revengeful.” The death of a marine afforded an opportunity, at the first meeting with the commissioners, of demanding a burying-place. It was proposed to send the body to Nagasaki; but, as the commodore would not listen to that, a spot was assigned near one of their temples, and in view of the ships, where the body was buried, with all the forms of the English church service, after which the Japanese surrounded the grave with a neat enclosure of bamboo. A formal letter of reply to the propositions contained in the letters delivered at the former visit, repeated the story of a change of succession, and the necessity of delays. The justice, however, of the demands in relation to shipwrecked seamen, wood, water, provisions, and coal, was conceded; but five years were asked before opening a new harbor, the Americans, in the mean time, to resort to Nagasaki. [Illustration: JAPANESE WRESTLERS] Of Nagasaki, however, the commodore would not hear, nor of any restrictions like those imposed on the Dutch and Chinese at that port. He demanded three harbors, one in Nippon, one in Yezo, and a third in Lew Chew. As to the two last, the Japanese pleaded that they were very distant countries, and only partially subject to the emperor, especially the last, upon which the commodore did not insist. In Nippon he asked for Uraga, and for Matsumae in Yezo, but acceded to the Japanese offer of Shimoda and Hakodate, having first sent a ship to examine the former. The commissioners were exceedingly tenacious, even upon points of phraseology, but gave evidence of acting in entire good faith, and the commodore conceded everything which did not seem absolutely essential. The extent of the liberty to be allowed to American visitors was one of the greatest difficulties.