delicious fishes, and their hundred varieties
of bread, hot and stale.

This is, then, the Saint Boblink Hotel, with
its clerks' office like a banker's counting-
house; with its courteous, accomplished
clerks in rings and chains; with its bridal
chambers fitted up in white satin, ivory and
gold, for new married couples on their
wedding tour; with its hundred mechanical
appliances for bell-ringing, message-calling and
trouble-saving of every description; with its
electric telegraph laid on like gas or water, its
countless waiters, its really moderate charges,
and admirable management and discipline.
Can anything be wanting to make it perfect?
Little, perhaps, save the conversion of the
bedrooms into which single travellers are put,
from comfortless, scanty, draughty dogholes,
into decently furnished and moderately
comfortable chambers, and save the abolition or
banishment of that great nuisance, and curse,
and scandal, the expectoration of tobacco
juice.

Come away from the Saint Boblink House,
traveller, for we are wanted in Europe again,
By the time we return to the States, perhaps
the giant palace will have been burnt down
and built up again, bigger and handsomer
than ever.

FAR EAST.

BETWEEN Great Britain and Japan, a
treaty has been ratified which opens,
under considerable restrictions, certain
Japanese ports. This consent to partial
intercourse with men of Anglo-Saxon blood
was, in the first instance, obtained by the
Americans; and, by uniting tact with
firmness, the Americans have won both for
themselves and us—in one of the new ports,
Hakodadi—much good-will and more reasonable
licence than was contemplated, on the
Japanese side, in the terms of an unreasonable
treaty. Our treaty followed upon the American,
formally giving share to England in all
rights conceded to our cousins. We have
been negotiating, however, with especial view
to the use of Nagasaki harbour; and, either
because the native authorities in that part
belong to a less liberal party, or because our
admiral was too chary of self-assertion, English
right of entering into Nagasaki as per treaty,
is at present worth little enough. In the
meantime, Russia, encroaching neighbour to
the Japanese, has been also treaty-making.
The Russian admiral began, according to the
advice of the great traveller, Von Siebold, all
submission and concession; but, having
discovered that too great a show of consideration
for the prejudices of the Japanese officials
was not the way to get any concessions from
them, he changed his policy. The consequence
was, that whatever was desired was
asked for, and abided by—and had.

Ships of an English squadron coming last
year, in the Japanese seas, and hovering near
the Russian settlements, about the mouth of
the Amoor, put more than once into ports of
Japan opened by the treaty; deriving such
advantage as they could from its provisions. On
board one of these ships was a black-coated
captain, Bernard Whittingham, of the Royal
Engineers. He sailed with the commodore
as a visitor on board the Sibylle, and took
some pleasant notes of what he saw, which
notes he has now published. Of Japan
generally we gave an account in our third volume,
page one hundred and sixty-three; we shall
not, therefore, repeat accounts of manners and
customs that have been already described in
Household Words. To what we have before
said, our purpose is to add some notes
founded on Captain Whittiugham's
experience; from which a little may be gathered of
the spirit of our present relations with the
Japanese, and of the prospect of a more
extended intercourse hereafter with this hermit
people.

Hakodadi harbour is shaped like a stirrup,
with about one-half of the foot-plate broken off;
the bay forming it, being a segment of a circle
four miles broad, five deep, with a rocky
peninsula (the broken stirrup foot) stretching
across half-way, and narrowing the entrance,
to a width of two miles. On the steep inner
side of the peninsula, along its lower slopes,
the town is built; above rise green hills belted
with pine and beech, dotted with gardens and
temples, and ending in peaks; none of a higher
elevation than about twelve hundred feet. A
narrow sandy isthmus connects this peninsula
with the mainland of the large island of
Yezo, to which the port belongs. Then comes
level ground well covered with villages,
hamlets and farms nestled among trees.
This ground very soon runs into rich uplands;
and, beyond the uplands rise bold mountains
ever higher and higher, till, in the distance,
the snow-capped peak of an extinct volcano
towers above all. That is the land scenery,
with trains of ponies moving on the roads,
small bullocks feeding on the lower lands,
and seagulls, at peace with society (for the
Japanese kill no animals except it be a man
or fish), ready to alight on any vessel, and
inspect it at their leisure.

The sole animal food used in Japan is fish,
with which the seas teem; and the harbours
and shores are lined with fishing boats. At a
fishing settlement on the coast of Sagalien so
much fresh fish was brought daily to the
squadron, that, on board the Sibylle alone,
there were sent in one day six hundred salmon
of from three to seven pounds weight.
Our squadron found at Hakodadi an
enlightened governor, who was said to be of the
blood of the Ziogoon.

Yezo is the island lying to the north of
the chief island Niphon on which is Jeddo,
the Japanese metropolis. It has a more
rigorous climate, and as Hakodadi (it was a
fishing town dependent on the neighbouring
feudal prince of Matsmai) is a port but recently