Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/23

 of the large mail steamers, with a lone man-of-war or a sporadic sailing-ship, ever fly the Stars and Stripes among a forest of masts fluttering with the flags of all nations. The American navy is conspicuous by its absence, unless a venerable wooden side-wheeler represents the might of the world’s most boastful country. A fleet of otter schooners flies the American flag, and enjoys seal-hunting in the Northern Ocean without disturbing international relations.

A mole and protected harbor with stone docks is being built with the money only lately returned to Japan by the United States, after being shamefully withheld for a quarter of a century, as our share of the Shimonoseki Indemnity Fund. The present basin lies so open to the prevailing south-east winds that loading and unloading is often delayed for days, and landing by launches or sampans is a wet process. The Bay is so shallow that a stiff wind quickly sends its waves breaking over the sea-wall, to subside again in a few hours into a mirror-like calm. The harbor has had its great typhoons, but does not lie in the centre of those dreaded circular storms that whirl up from the China seas. Deflected to eastward, the typhoon sends its typhoon, or wet end, to fill the air with vapor and drizzle, and a smothering, mildewy, exhausting atmosphere. A film of mist covers everything, wall-paper loosens, glued things fall apart, and humanity wilts.

Yokohama has its divisions—the Settlement, the Bluff, and Japanese Town—each of which is a considerable place by itself. The Settlement, or region originally set apart by the Japanese in 1858 for foreign merchants, was made by filling in a swampy valley opening to the Bay. This Settlement, at first separated from the Tokaido and the Japanese town of Kanagawa, has become the centre of a surrounding Japanese population of over eighty thousand. It is built up continuously to 7