Japan and the Japanese

THE MORRISON DRIVEN OFF. 493
and the emperor, which he promised to deliver to a superior officer.
He left a pilot on board ;
a supply of water was sent, and the ship
was visited by many boat-loads of people, superior in appearance
to those seen in the bay of Jedo ;
but they brought nothing to sell.
The despatches were soon brought back by several officers, the
superior officer, it was stated, declining to receive them. They
added that the depositions of the Japanese passengers, who had
landed for the purpose of giving them, had been forwarded to Kan-
gosiiua, and that a superior officer might be expected
from that
city. Provisions were promised, and that the vessel should be
towed higher up the bay ; but", early in the morning of the twelfth,
the crew of a fishing-boat communicated to the Japanese on board a
rumor that the ship was to be expelled. Warlike preparations were
soon seen on shore, in
strips of blue and white canvas stretched from
tree to tree. The Japanese on board stated, with rueful faces, that
these preparations portended war ; nor, according to their descrip-
tion, were these cloth batteries so contemptible as they might seem,
as four or five pieces of heavy canvas, loosely stretched, one behind
another, at short intervals, would weaken the force of, indeed,
almost stop, a cannon ball.
Officers on horseback, and several hundred soldiers, soon made
their appearance, and a fire of musketry and artillery was com-
menced. The anchor was weighed, and the sails set, but there was
no wind. For eighteen hours the ship was exposed, without any
means of offering resistance, to two fires from opposite sides of the
bay, which was from three to five miles broad, till, at last, she was
with difficulty conducted clear of the shoals, and past the forts.
All hope of friendly intercourse, or of returning the men, was
now abandoned. The poor fellows suffered severely at this unex-
pected extinction of their prospect of revisiting their families. They
expressed great indignation at the conduct of their countrymen, and
two of them shaved their heads entirely, in token, as it was under-
stood, of having renounced their native soil. As it was not deemed
expedient to go to Nagasaki, where the Japanese on board expressed
their determination not to land, the Morrison returned to Macao *
* Three accounts of this voyage have been published, one by "Williams
'Chinese Repository, Nov. and Dec., 1837); a second by Parker, London,
42