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stationed 1,500 soldiers each in Yokohama since 1863, in barracks built and repaired at the expense of the Japanese Government, now regarded the measure as useless, and evacuated the town of their own accord on the 25th of February, 1875.

It was in the same year that the long-pending question of Sakhalin was finally solved. Previous to this, in 1871, Imperial Councillor Soyejima had been sent out to Possiet Bay to confer with the Russian Governor residing there on the boundary question, but no definite result could be attained, nor could the Iwakura mission negotiating in St. Petersburg obtain any better success. In the meanwhile the Russians took advantage of the unsettled situation of Sakhalin, and, establishing a local government in Alexandrowsk, extended the sphere of their action in various directions, and even encroached on the southern portions of the island occupied by the Japanese fishermen.

On Soyejima’s appointment to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he heard of Russia’s selling Alaska to the United States, and conceived the idea of buying from Russia her claim to the portion of the island south of 50° of latitude. The Finance Minister Okuma agreed to advance 2,000,000 rio, and negotiations were entered into with the Russian Chargé d’Affaires. As the Russian Government refused the offer, Soyejima made the alternative proposal of appropriating the islands of Urup, Kunashiri and Iturup to Japan, and ceding the whole of Sakhalin to Russia on the condition that the latter agreed to permit the passage of Japanese troops through the Russian territory in case of war with a continental Power (Soyejima undoubtedly had in view the invasion of Corea from the north). In March, 1873, with the boundary question still pending, Soyejima was sent to the Court of Peking as aforesaid, and when he returned, in August of the same year, the United States Minister in Tokyo came to him one day and privately acquainted him with the decision of the Russian Government to sell to Japan all claims on Sakhalin. But almost on the same day Councillor Itagaki called on him and told him that the Japanese Cabinet had just decided to adopt the views advocated in the memoirs of Kuroda, Director of the United Board of Yeso and Sakhalin, and abandon the whole island to Russia, with or without condition as the case might be. According to Kuroda, the island was not worth the money required to bring it to a cultivable condition, for not only was the climate extremely cold, but the soil was barren and unproductive, besides there being constant fear of collision with Russia as long as Japan possessed only a portion of it. The Russian representative in Tokyo was not slow to hear of