CHAPTER XXXIII. THE PROFESSOR AND THE SAILOR MAKE A TREATY.
The morning of March 8th, 1854, dawned clear and beautiful. The bay was alive with gorgeous state barges, swift punts, and junks with tasseled prows. On land, in the foreground were a few hundred feudal retainers in gay costumes, while on the bluffs beyond stood dense masses of spectators. These were kept back with rope-barriers, and by petty officials of prodigious self-importance. The sunbeams glittered on the bare heads and freshly-pomatumed top-knots of country folk, and was reflected dazzlingly from lacquered hats and burnished weapons. In the variegated paraphernalia of feudalism,—then of such vast importance, but now as cast off trumpery transmigrating through the parlors and museums to dusty nirvana in the garrets of christendom,—could be distinguished the insignia of the commissioners and feudal lords, whose troops darkened the hill tops as spectators. The striped oval figure of Hayashi; the five disks surrounding a smaller central dot like satellites about Jupiter, belonging to Ito; the feminine millinery, three curved women’s hats, of Isawa; the revolving disks suggesting a wind-mill, of Tsudzuki; the three Euclid-recalling cubes of Udono; the ring-enclosed goggle-spectacles of Takénouchi; appeared and reappeared on banner, umbrella, hat, coat, and cover of dignitaries and retainers. Many and various were the explanations offered by the Americans as to the cabalistic meaning of these crests of Japanese heraldry. One in particular, which looked like three commas in perpetual revolution, but prevented from flying off into a nebular hypothesis by a tire, attracted special attention.
