The treaties of 1858 took their proper effect at the two ports of Hakodate and Kanagawa; but the former being remote from any centre of population, and its trading resources so obviously limited, it attracted little attention in commercial circles. It was in the more southerly port that the new foreign interests became concentrated; and it was so near the capital--only seventeen miles distant--that the political and commercial currents soon acted and reacted on each other with direct, and sometimes violent, effect. To Kanagawa, therefore, the merchants of all nations gathered in anticipation of the official opening of the port on the 1st of July 1859. We say "Kanagawa," to follow the official nomenclature, but in reality the adventurers who came there to seek their fortunes did not land at that place, but three miles away from it, at an obscure village called Yokohama. There the Japanese Government had decided should be the future settlement for foreigners, and they had made costly preparations, according to their lights, for the accommodation of the strangers. Roads were marked out, a certain number of wooden bungalows had been run up, a few shops had been opened in the quarter which was designed for native occupation, a custom-house was built, with warehouses attached, and stone landing-places had been constructed for boats and lighters. The area thus marked out for the native and foreign business quarter was a narrow strip along the sea-shore, having in its flank and rear an immense lagoon, or, as it was called, "the swamp," intersected by boat channels, where punting after wildfowl provided amusement for idle foreigners. Being an inlet of the bay, the swamp made a peninsula of Yokohama, which had just been connected with the _tokaido_, the great trunk road between the capital of the Tycoon and that of the Mikado, by a new causeway and several good bridges, admitting of boat traffic between the swamp and the sea. In the middle of the swamp, in rear of Yokohama, was a reclaimed portion whereon was erected an extensive range of buildings connected by a causeway with the dry land of the settlement. From its balconies there waved pendants of cotton cloth bearing the legend, "This place is designed for the amusement of foreigners," a class of amusement of which there has never been any lack in Japan. Such were some of the outward and visible preparations made by the Japanese Government, on its own initiative, for the reception of the foreigners under the new treaties,--preparations which surprised and somewhat disconcerted the representatives of the Western Governments when they arrived on the eve of the opening of the port.