With five hundred men landed in twenty-seven boats, each one, including musicians, thoroughly well-armed, the marines forming a hollow square, the three bands discoursing music, the Paixhans on the _Macedonian_, and the howitzers in the boats, making fire, flame, thunder, and echoes; with all possible fuss, parade, shine and glitter, the sailor-diplomatist made disembarkation at noon, in his white gig from the _Powhatan_. With due deliberation and stately march, he entered the treaty-house, where negotiations began. The Commodore knew as he confesses, “the importance and moral influence of such show upon so ceremonious and artificial a people as the Japanese.” Without being at all anxious to imitate or copy them, he yet impressed them amazingly. How he came to know so much about etiquette and propriety, without having lived in Kiōto, or studied Confucius or Ogasawara (the Chesterfield of Japan) strained their wits to discover. Perhaps they noticed that while “the emperor,” that is the chief daimiō of Yedo, and the Mikado’s lieutenant styled “Tycoon,” (as _Koku-O_, king of a country) received a salute of twenty-one guns, and his hatamoto Hayashi, officer of the sixth rank seventeen guns, the first salute was from the heavy ordnance on the _Macedonian_, while the others were from boat-howitzers. The _Powhatan_ hoisted at the masthead the striped pennant, which the Americans innocently supposed was the national emblem. The tedious business of diplomacy began by interchange of notes and answers. Then Hayashi remarked that attention would be given to the supply of wood, coal, and water for needy ships, and to the care of shipwrecked sailors, but that no proposition for trade could be allowed. To this Perry made no reply, but spoke up suddenly upon the question of burial. A marine on the _Mississippi_ named Williams, had died two days previously, and it was proposed to bury him on Matsu-shima (Pine Isle) or Webster’s Island. After private conferences by the Japanese in another room, exchange of much sentiment on both sides, and an exposition of Japanese law and custom by Hayashi—during which Perry intimated his readiness to stay in the bay a year or two if necessary—permission was granted to bury in one of the temple-grounds at Yokohama. Thus began with Christian ceremonies, under the very shadow of the edicts promulgated centuries before, denouncing “the Christian criminal God,” with offer of gold to informers against the “outlawed sect,” that God’s acre now so beautiful. Its slope was to fatten with many a victim by the assassin’s sword before Japan should become a Land of Great Peace either to the alien or the Christian.