SIR: I HAVE the honor to inform you that I left Yokohama on the 21st day of December, in the Shenandoah, for this port, reaching the anchorage at Hiogo on the after afternoon of the 23rd. We there found Rear-Admiral Bell in the Hartford, and the Iroquois and Aroostook of his squadron. The Monacacy arrived on the 25th, the Oneida on the 28th. We also found seven English vessels of war, the English admiral arriving in the Salamis two days afterwards. Quite a number of Japanese vessels and steamers were at anchor in the harbor. Paul Frank, esq., consular agent for Hiogo, accompanied me in the Shenandoah.

[…] The Japanese government had been diligently at work in preparing the site selected for the foreign settlement, and in the erection of the necessary bonded warehouses and custom-house, pursuant to the arrangements made in May last, a copy of which I then transmitted to you. Although these works were all in a state of forwardness, they were not completed, and my first business on landing was to urge the governor having the work in charge to renewed exertions. I secured there, for our consular agent, comfortable temporary accomodations in a temple near to the foreign settlement, and gave him an introduction to the official authorities of the port.

On the 28th of December I came up to this city, the Shenandoah anchoring off the mouth of the river, eleven miles only from her previous anchorage at Hiogo. On the morning of the 29th, I landed under a salute from the Japanese fort, which was returned by the Shenandoah, and took possession of the temple of Unlygee, which had been set apart for me as a temporary legation, being the same one I occupied when here in May last. The representative of Great Britian, in her Britannic Majesty's vessel Adventure, left Yokohama upon the same day with the Shenandoah, and, coming directly to this city, reached it on the evening of the 23rd of December.

The minister of France, in the Laplace, arrived about the 30th, and those of Italy and Prussia on the 31st. The representative of Holland is now at Hiogo, but is expected here daily.