Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/200

 return scarcely seemed a serious menace. When, therefore, Commodore Perry did really reappear off Uraga in the spring of 1854, consternation fell upon the Shōgun's ministers. They issued orders to the feudatories throughout the Empire to prepare for war, and they sent officials to Uraga to hold the intruders there. If only the Americans could be prevented from entering Yedo Bay, the situation might be saved. Commodore Perry consented to a compromise: he did not push further than the harbour now overlooked by the Yokohama settlement, and there he anchored. Could he have obtained any knowledge of the perturbation produced in Yedo by his doings, he would probably have framed his demands on a much larger scale. But he did not know that every time the tide swung his vessels' prows northward, the news, carried to Yedo by flying messengers, created a general panic; and that whenever the ships rode with their prows southward, the intelligence of their changed position caused the capital to breathe again, so that for some days moods of despair and hope succeeded each other in regular succession. Neither did he know that the Shōgun's officials, or at any rate those to whom was entrusted the duty of dealing with the American envoy, never had any idea of serious resistance. Contenting himself, therefore, with a treaty guaranteeing intercourse on a limited scale, the American envoy sailed away.