With regard to going through the streets and seeing shops and houses shut, with neither women nor children in their ways, let it be here observed, that at Yokohama this very matter was plainly spoken of by Moriyama, the interpreter at that place. The customs of our country are unlike yours, and the people have been unused to see persons from foreign lands; though the authorities did what they could to pacify them, and teach them better, they still were disinclined to believe, and many absconded or hid themselves. If the commodore will recall to mind, the day, when he took a ramble at Yokohama, in which some of us accompanied him, he will recollect, that in the villages and houses we hardly saw a woman, during the whole walk. If he saw more of them at Simoda as he went about, it was because there the people were gradually accustomed to the Americans, and their fears had been allayed, so that they felt no dread. On these remote frontiers, many hundred miles from Yedo, the usages of the people are so fixed, that they are not easily influenced and altered; but pray, how can the inhabitants here think of regarding the Americans with inimical feelings? Even when they see their officers, with the sight of whom they are not familiar, they also run aside, and as if for fear, they seek to escape us. It is the custom of our country, that officers should accompany visiters about; a custom not to be so soon changed. Still the disposition of the men here, is ingenuous, brave, upright, and good; and that of the women retiring and modest—not gazing at men as if without bashfulness. Such characteristics and such usages must be considered as estimable, and we think that you also would not dislike them. There is a spring near the town, the water of which is strongly impregnated with sulphur, and supposed to be highly medicinal; but what of thy various supplies, O Hakodadi! An egg, like Cæsar’s wife, should be above suspicion. The number gotten by our mess, like the swords of the clan of Lochiel, was “a thousand;”—the good ones, were “one.” Hakodadi, in Japanese, is “box-eating house;” in American memory it is questionable eggs. On the 3d of June, the Powhatan and the Mississippi started on their return to Simoda: we looked upon the departure from Hakodadi as the culminating point of the cruise. When we reached the entrance to the harbor, a sudden and dense fog settled on us— “The mist-like banners clasp’d the air, As clouds with clouds embrace.” We ran a little distance, whistling for the want of sight, but at the fog signal of one gun from the flag-ship, came to anchor. In an hour the fog lifted like a blanket, and opened like a funnel, when both steamers, with a stiff wind that enabled them also to make sail, ran out of the straits. CHAPTER XIV.