To protect them against imposition, and to provide for their comfort and security, three navy officers who had visited Japan were appointed to the general oversight of the embassy while it remained in this country. On the 14th they visited General Cass, the Secretary of State, and on the next day had a formal audience from the President. Though received as ministers plenipotentiary, their powers appeared to be limited to an exchange of the ratifications of the treaty, and to obtaining information as to the relative value of Japanese and foreign coins,—a point which still remained unsettled in Japan, and was the occasion of much complaint on the part of the foreign residents. [Illustration: THE OLD AND THE NEW: JUNKS; THE NEW BATTLESHIP _Mikasa_] The Japanese remained in Washington till the 8th of June, spending their time in visits to the various public buildings, and a good deal of it in shopping, for which many of them seemed to have a great fancy. After passing through Baltimore, where they remained one night only, they spent a week in Philadelphia, where the Mint and its processes were special objects of interest. From Philadelphia they went on to New York, where they were received at the Battery by an escort of five or six thousand men of the New York militia, and conveyed through an immense crowd to the quarters which had been provided for them at the Metropolitan Hotel. Here they remained for two weeks, and on the 1st of July embarked on board the United States steam-frigate “Niagara,” to return to Japan by the Cape of Good Hope, being thus the first of their nation to make the circumnavigation of the globe.