Meanwhile, the erection of earth-works along the strand and on the bluffs progressed. The farm laborers, the fishermen, palanquin-bearers, pack-horse leaders, women and children were impressed into the work. With hoe and spade, and baskets of rope matting slung from a pole borne on the shoulders of two men, or each with divided load depending scale-wise from one shoulder, receiving an iron cash at each passing of the paymaster, they toiled day and night. Rude parapets of earth knit together with grass were made and pierced with embrasures. These were twice too wide for unwieldly, long, and ponderously heavy brass cannon able to throw a three or six pound ball. The troops were clad in mail of silk, iron and paper, a kind of war corset, for which rifle balls have little respect. Their weapons were match-locks and spears. Their evolutions were those of Taikō’s time, both on drill and parade. Curtained camps sprung up, around which stretched impressive walls of cotton cloth etched by the dyer’s mordant with colossal crests. These were not to represent “sham forts, of striped canvas,” and thus to frighten the invaders, as the latter supposed; but, according to immemorial custom, to denote military business, and to display either the insignia of the great Shō-gun or the particular clan to which a certain garrison or detachment belonged. The political system headed by the Tycoon, had to the Japanese mind nothing amusing in its name of Bakafu or Curtain Government, though to the foreigner, suggestive of Mrs. Caudle. It had, however, a certain hostile savor. It was a mild protest against the camp over-awing the throne. It implied criticism of the Shō-gun, and reverence to the Mikado.