In February last, Commander H. A. Adams, visited Simoda in the Powhatan and exchanged the ratification of our treaty with the Japanese, but not without some delay and difficulty. The Japanese affected to be much surprised at his early return, and contended, that the treaty said, that the exchange of ratifications was to be _in_ eighteen months. Captain Adams contended, that our copy said _within_ eighteen months, and that we had a right to send it back as soon as we liked. After some delay in getting the originals from Yedo and examining them, this matter was settled. When they were asked for the signature of the emperor to accompany that of the president, they said that was impossible: that he never put his name to any document whatever. The captain then resorted to a little bullying—the thing which had been so successfully practised upon them by the _opperbevelhebber_—and told them, he would not like to carry back such an answer to his country—that if we could have imagined such a thing, our secretary of state only would have signed the ratification, and not the president. They came down and gave the signature of the emperor—that is a lot of snakes’ tails, flies’ legs, and triangles, which for all we know, were but there by Tatsnoski, or any other functionary. The appearance of Simoda after the frightful earthquake there in December, was sad in the extreme. The town was piled in ruins, and junks had been carried a distance of two miles into neighboring fields. The Russian admiral Pontiatine was at Simoda, during the terrible convulsion, and seeing nothing desirable about the port, had been insisting upon Oassacca, the seaport of the city of Meaco, as one of the places to be granted his country, but the wrecking of his ship, the Diana, by the earthquake, left him in no condition to insist upon his point with force, so he was compelled to consent to Simoda. The implicit obedience to their laws, under whatever circumstances, by the Japanese, was shown at the wrecking and sinking of a junk, that drifted afoul of the Diana and was stove. Two of her crew only clung to the Diana, the rest stolidly sunk with the junk. Those saved were asked the cause of this strange conduct on the part of their late comrades. They said it was, that their laws forbid them going on board of a foreign vessel; nor did they know what would be done with themselves for it. If it be the best government, which governs least, that is not the government of Japan; like the law of gravitation it is always in action: its Briarian arms are everywhere, and its subjects are a community of Arguses. When storm is on the deep and its mariners are clinging to their long tillers and shuddering at the yawning sea, each lightning flash of heaven shows them an etiolating hand, that will crush them, if they dare leave their craft, until half engulfed.