Forty feet high, the camellia trees, with hard, green buds unburst. It is early yet for camellias, and the green buds and the glazed green leaves toss frantically in a blustering March wind. Sheltered behind the forty feet high camellia trees, on the hills of Idzu, stand watchmen straining their eyes over a broken dazzle of sea.
Just at the edge of moonlight and sunlight—moon setting; sun rising—they come. Seven war ships heeled over and flashing, dashing through heaped waves, sleeping a moment in hollows, leaping over ridges, sweeping forward in a strain of canvas and a train of red-black smoke.
"The fire-ships! The fire-ships!"
Slip the bridles of your horses, messengers, and clatter down the Tokaido; scatter pedestrians, palanquins, slow moving cattle, right and left into the cryptomerias; rattle over bridges, spatter dust into shop-windows. To Yedo! To Yedo! For Spring is here, and the fire-ships have come!
Seven vessels, flying the stars and stripes, three more shortly to join them, with ripe, fruit-bearing guns pointed inland.
Princes evince doubt, distrust. Learning must beat learning. Appoint a Professor of the University. Delay, prevaricate. How long can the play continue? Hayashi, learned scholar of Confucius and Mencius—he shall confer with the barbarians at Uraga. Shall he! Word comes that the Mighty Chief of Ships will not go to Uraga. Steam is up, and—Horror! Consternation! The squadron moves toward Yedo! Sailors, midshipmen, lieutenants, pack yards and cross-trees, seeing temple gates, castle towers, flowered pagodas, and look-outs looming distantly clear, and the Commodore on deck can hear the slow booming of the bells from the temples of Shiba and Asakusa.
You must capitulate, great Princes of a quivering gate. Say Yokohama, and the Commodore will agree, for they must not come to Yedo.
Rows of japonicas in full bloom outside the Conference House. Flags, and streamers, and musicians, and pikemen. Five hundred officers, seamen, marines, and the Commodore following in his white-painted gig. A jig of fortune indeed, with a sailor and a professor manoeuvring for terms, chess-playing each other in a game of future centuries.
The Americans bring presents. Presents now, to be bought hereafter. Good will, to head long bills of imports. Occidental mechanisms to push the Orient into limbo. Fox-moves of interpreters, and Pandora's box with a contents rated far too low.
Round and round goes the little train on its circular railroad, at twenty miles an hour, with grave dignitaries seated on its roof. Smiles, gestures, at messages running over wire, a mile away. Touch the harrows, the ploughs, the flails, and shudder at the "spirit pictures" of the daguerreotype machine. These Barbarians have harnessed gods and dragons. They build boats which will not sink, and tinker little gold wheels till they follow the swinging of the sun.