to indicate
possibilities of danger; but these samurai themselves were not only
courteous, but interested and smiling, and I thought gave good promise
that their class in general was coming round to friendliness.

We left Kobe towards the end of September, in company with a new
flag-ship which had arrived to take the place of the _Hartford_. This
vessel rejoiced to call herself _Piscataqua_, which is worth recording
as a sample of a class of name then much affected by the powers that
were, presumably on account of their length; "fine flourishers," to
quote the always illustrative Boatswain Chucks, "as long as their
homeward-bound pendants, which in a calm drop in the water alongside."
_Piscataqua_, however uncouth, most Americans can place; but what
shall we say of _Ammonoosuc_, _Wampanoag_, and such like, then
adorning our lists, which seem as though extracted by a fine-tooth
comb drawn through the tangle of Indian nomenclature. Under the
succeeding administration _Piscataqua_ was changed to _Delaware_. The
new commander-in-chief was among our most popular officers,
distinguished alike for seamanship, courage, and courtesy; but he held
to great secrecy as to his intentions, which caused officers more
inconvenience than seemed always quite necessary. Questions of
mess-stores, of correspondence, and other pre-arrangements, depend
much upon knowledge of future movements, as exact as may not interfere
with service emergencies. These in peace times rarely require
concealment. A characteristic story ran that, as the two vessels were
leaving Kobe, when the flag-ship's anchor was a-weigh, her captain,
still ignorant of her destination, turned to the admiral and said,
"Which way shall I lay her head, sir?"

It turned out that we were bound to Nagasaki, on our way to China. The
approaching northeast monsoon, with its dry, bracing air, dictates the
period when foreign squadrons usually go south, having during the
summer in Japan avoided the debilitating damp heat which those months
entail in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and the Chinese ports generally. The
_Iroquois_, however, had soon to separate from the flag-ship, owing to
news received of a singular occurrence, savoring more of two hundred
years ago, or of to-day's dime novel--"shilling shocker," as our
British brethren have it--than of the prosaic nineteenth century.
There had arrived at Hakodate, the northernmost of the then open
Japanese ports, on the island of Yezo and Strait o