Note 99 — Chapter XLIII

There has been a great alteration in the last twenty years. Siebold states that sixty-eight square-rigged vessels—mostly, no doubt, American whalers—had been counted by the Japanese as passing Matsumae and Hakodate in one year. According to a memorandum furnished to Commodore Perry during his recent visit to Hakodate (May 3, 1854), there had been, in the years 1847-1851, no less than five foreign vessels wrecked in that vicinity.