ALL HAD DREADED “the stormy Japanese seas,” against which foreign tradition, woeful experience, and Chinese poetry were one in indictment, but the nine days’ journey was over tranquil seas, and on November 3,1859, anchor was cast at Kanagawa and the three “religious invaders” set foot on shore.
Yokohama of 1859 was a narrow strip of land, extending from Benten to the canal since cut through, two hundred yards wide at the northern end and fifty yards wide at the southern end. All else was marsh often covered with water, and fishing boats were sometimes seen on what is now the larger part of a city of two hundred thousand people. Fourteen vessels lay in the harbor, including the U. S. S. S. Powhatan and a British man-of-war. Dr. and Mrs. J. C. Hepburn, missionaries of the American Presbyterian Church, were already on the ground. In years before these pioneers in Japan had been fellow workers at Macao. Now they “met again in this strange and newly opened country as laborers in the same cause.”
The newcomers were welcomed by the U. S. consul, General Door, who had already procured a Buddhist temple for these new guests of the empire.
It seems curious that the Japanese should so readily lend their temples as residences to foreigners, but so they did, for even then these canny islanders loved lucre, and they love it more now. Indeed they are in the world's race for dollars. The idols, tables, temple furniture, incense burners, and what-not had been stowed away in a recess beside the main altar and shut up there in darkness and disuse by a board partition. This was to be so long as the “hairy foreigners” should occupy the building. Outside of the main edifice was the building for the priests who had gone elsewhere to live, though an old bonze— almost a bronze in color—ninety years old, still dwelt in an adjoining house. General Door, the consul, was also a tenant of a temple in a most picturesque spot on a hill surrounded by trees and shrubbery.
In his first walk Mr. Brown, fresh from his farm on Owasco Lake, noticed peas, turnips, and buckwheat growing in patches near each other.