We had now been lying in their waters a month; the necessity for the reference of many things to Yedo, caused the negotiations to drag their weary length along. Diplomatizing may have been all very well for those engaged in it, and getting a munch of something fresh the while on shore, but the enchantment lent to those confined on board and compelled to watch proceedings with a spy-glass, or take exercise on a hurricane-deck, was very slight indeed. The supply of eatables brought from China had disappeared; ship’s rations were ubiquitous upon the table; and the appetite of an American exceeding, or at his ordinary meals consuming as much as four Japanese, the scanty supply of watery vegetables, a few pounds of fish, sweet potatoes, and chickens which had attained their majority, and upon whose muscular thighs neither the molars nor incisors of the most assiduous masculine chewer could make any impression—which negotiation obtained from shore—when distributed by signal from a storeship among a whole squadron, went but a little way. We were undergoing all the annoyances of a state of siege, without any of its excitements. And “Oh! it is sweet for one’s country to die,”—but not of short commons. The Japanese said they had no objection to the officers going ashore to walk about the towns of Yokohama and Kanagawa, but trusted they would not for the present go further; the people had not become used to strangers, and their presence might produce unnecessary excitement among them. The chaplain of the Susquehanna was ashore on the 14th, and took a long stroll, not getting aboard until ten o’clock at night. Had he made the best of his time he might have had a sight of the city of Yedo, but he spent some two or three hours in going to and fro in Kanagawa, and an adjoining place, which enabled the wily Japanese authorities time to communicate his whereabouts to the commodore, and to make complaint of it. He visited the very populous city of Kanagawa, and also Kasacca. At a wave of the hand of the Japanese officials who accompanied him, the crowds of people opened a clear passage in the centre of the street for him. He entered some of the houses, which he found primitive in their furniture and arrangements, but, compared with other oriental dwellings of the same class, neat, clean, and comfortable. In some of them he observed clocks of Japanese manufacture. He also visited several temples, which though smaller than in China, have more gilding on their walls, and ornaments on their idols, and generally are in better order. The priests as well as the people were distinguished for their courtesy.