[…] WE LANDED AT Yokuhama [szc] between two piers protected by deep palisades of wooden piles, and were at once at the scene of Commodore Perry's negotiation of the American treaty, the temporary structure raised for that purpose on a previously uninhabited point of the shore having been recently converted into the spacious offices of the Japanese custom-house. Here on a level sandy spot extending a few hundred yards in each direction a foreign settlement of single-storied wooden houses and warehouses had speedily arisen, and all the busy scenes of European and Japanese traffic were visible. Japanese coolies, European and American sailors, native officials and foreign mercantile agents, gave an air of business and animation to the place; and every variety of costume from the oriental garb of the country to the light and easy vestments of every hue, pattern and device, which Europeans feel themselves at liberty to adopt in these remote settlements, was conspicuous among the moving crowd in the newly-formed road lining the shore.

There was a sense of negligence and discomfort throughout the whole place; and everything was in a state of transition towards something which it was hoped would be improvement. Weather-boarded houses on the ground, which served the united purpose of godown and dwelling, were in process of conversion; and the ready appliances of European inventiveness and native skill were set in motion for rendering them rain-proof during the now commencing wet season, and cool during the succeeding intense heat of the brief summer. Sliding partitions, divided by framework tastefully decorated with white silken flowered wall-paper, were rapidly changing the naked dreary warehouse-rooms into convenient and neat-looking domiciles. On the whole it would not severely tax a European's self-denial or power of self-adaptation to existing circumstances, to render the ordinary course of life at Yokuhama moderately pleasant and sufficiently agreeable.

A considerable trade has sprung up at Yokuhama in silk, tea, copper, vegetable oil, and other articles of Japanese produce. But the difficulties of money-exchange, and the arbitrary value placed on native coin, have operated as serious obstructions to the development of foreign commerce at the port. A more serious hindrance to the enlargement of trade is apprehended from the policy of the government in endeavouring to limit foreigners to this new settlement and preventing their residence beyond certain appointed boundaries.