The superb panorama that unfolded before the eyes from the decks charmed all eyes. Significant and portentous seemed the position of the lights of heaven on that eventful day. To the west of the peerless mountain Fuji, “the moon was setting sharply defining one side with its chill cold rays.”[29] In the orient, the sun arising in cloudless radiance burnished with brilliant glory the lordly cone as it swelled to the sky. Did the natives recall their poet’s comparison and contrast of “the old sage, grown sad and slow,” and “the youth” who “new systems, laws and fashions frames?” The moon typified Old Japan ready to pass away, the the sun heralded the New Japan that was to be. Matthew Perry was set for the rising and fall of many in the then hermit land. Passing Uraga and Perry Island, the seven vessels dropped anchor at the “American anchorage,” not far from Yokosŭka, and off the place, called in Japanese, Koshiba-ōki, (the little grass-plot looking out on the far-off sea). Unconsciously, the officers paced their decks beneath the shadows of the twin tombs of Will Adams[30] and his Japanese wife. From these very headlands, over which the English exile, who may have seen Shakespeare, took his evening walks two centuries before, he had perhaps seen in prophetic vision a sight like that below. Happy coincidence, that Perry’s right-hand man, bore the same name, Adams! The Commodore, still mysterious, invisible and inapproachable, had again out-flanked the wily orientals with their own weapons and turned their heavy guns against themselves. The mystery-play was kept up in a style that exceeded that of either Kiōto or Yedo. The naval generalissimo remained in the Forbidden Interior of his cabin as if behind bamboo curtains. Kurokawa Kahéi and his two interpreters were received with excruciating politeness by Captain Adams, assisted by Messrs. Portman, Williams and the Commodore’s son. In the delegation of official men were _ométsŭkes_ (censors, spies, or checks). They were well named “eye-appliers” (to holes usually made noiselessly, with moistened finger-tips, in the paper screens of the houses). These suggested that the negotiations should be carried on at Kamakura or Uraga. The programme, foreshadowed by answers to their questions, was an American advance on that of the previous year. The “Admiral” would do no such thing. It must be near the present safe anchorage. All the visits, conferences, discussions, presents, bonbons, oranges and confectionery, offers of eggs, fish and vegetables were impotent to alter the fiat of the Invisible Power in the cabin.