GENERAL DESCRIPTION

YOKOHAMA, BOTH FROM its position near the chief city of the Shogoonate or temporal government, and as being the residence of the foreign ministers is, politically speaking, the most important of the treaty ports yet open to foreign trade. Except in this respect and in the natural beauty of its neighbourhood, it cannot be said to possess many attractions, for being, as it is, a town, or rather village, erected since the opening of the treaty ports around the houses of the Europeans who first settled there, it has not antiquity to render it noticeable, nor is it a good specimen of a true Japanese town.

It was originally intended by Sir Rutherford Alcock, that the port to be opened in the bay of Yeddo should be situated at Kanagawa, a little village on the shore of the same bay on which Yokohama also stands, not only because the former place was situated on the Tocaido or great high road which runs through the whole empire, but also that the new settlement might by not its position be virtually separated from the main arteries of traffic, while at the same time too far distant from the capital. Many circumstances however prevented the carrying out of the late minister's design, one of the chief being the fact that the site he chose for the European town was so hemmed in by shoals and sand banks that vessels coming to trade would have had to lie a long distance out, and at any time but the highest tides would have been unable to discharge their cargoes except in very small boats. Indeed at low tide, opposite the village in question, the natives may be seen wading out to their boats, many hundred yards from the beach, and it would be impossible for ships to communicate with the shore with facility or convenience.

The Japanese themselves too, (at least those who had the management of the affair), evidently had a very great objection to foreigners settling so near the great highway, and by tacit or open opposition, and by delays, obviously unnecessary, continued to postpone the opening of the port until the plain at Yokohama, which they were most desirous of recommending, was occupied by the buildings of the earlier settlers on ground which they had already prepared, and which they endeavoured to induce the English minister to accept.