Japan and the Japanese

512 JAl'AN. A. D. 1S1T 1
towards the end of ISoli, sailed from the United States in the
frigate Mississippi, and, after
touching
at Madeira and the Capa
of Good Hope, arrived at Hong in Kong April, I^o3, whence ho
proeeeded to Shanghai. The dispersion of the vessels of the squad-
ron, delay in the arrival of others from the United States, difficulty in
obtaining coal, and the claim of the American merchants in China,
in consideration of existing civil commotions, to the protecting pres-
ence of a naval force, caused some delays. But, at length, after
touching at Lew Chew, and making a visit to the Bonin Islands,*
Perry, with the steam-frigate Susijuehanna, now the flag-ship, the
Mississippi, and the sloops-of-\var Plymouth and Saratoga, made
Cape Idsu about daybreak on the 8th of July. Many rumors had
been current on the coast of China of extensive warlike preparations
by the Japanese, aided by the Dutch, and the squadron was
fully prepared for a hostile reception. Perry had made up his
mind, instead of attempting to conciliate by yielding, to stand upon
his dignity to the utmost, to allow no petty annoyances, and to
demand as a right, instead of soliciting as a favor, the courtesies
due from one civilized nation to another.
The promontory constituting the province of Idsu appeared, as
the vessels ran along it, to be a group of high mountains, their sum-
mits scarred with slides, and their sides mostly wooded, though
* These islands lie between 2G 3 30' and 'J7 J 45' north latitude, about five
hundred miles west of Lew I'liew and the same distance south of Jedo, on
the direct route from the Sandwich Islands to Shanghai, three thousand
three hundred miles from th8 former, and about one thousand one hun-
dred from the latter. They consist of three groups. The largest island is
about forty miles in circumference. There are nine others, diminishing
down to five or six miles of circumference, and about seventy rocky islets, all
evidently of volcanic origin. The extent of the whole is about two hundred
and fifty square miles. The name is Japanese, and signifies " uninhabited,"
descriptive of the state in which they were found when discovered by a Japanese
vessel in Hil'i ; and, except some ineffectual attempts at penal colo-
nization by the Japanese, so they remained till occupied, in 1830, by a colony
from the Sandwich Islands, partly Americans and Europeans, and partly
Sandwich-l.-I.tnderc. They had been visited and claimed for the British
crown in 1H'J7, by Captain Beechey, in the surveying ship Blossom. Th
larger ones are fertile and well watered, but scantily wooded. The largest,
called Peel's Islands by Beechey, has a good harbor, and here Perry bought a
piece of land from a squatter for a coal depot