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twenty Coreans before they opened the way for the Japanese. Hanabusa first directed the column to the quarters of the Governor of Seoul, whose duty it was to protect the Legation, and finding the whole building empty, he now proceeded to the royal palace—for his diplomatic duty forbade him to quit the capital without leave from the Sovereign to whom he was accredited—but as all the gates of the palace were hermetically sealed against him, he now declared his mission at an end, and retired to Ninsen, where he arrived at three o’clock in the afternoon of the following day. In Ninsen the party was courteously received by the Corean local officers, who offered our Minister their own houses as lodging, and all were resting themselves quietly and drying their clothes, wet with rain, when they were suddenly attacked by the soldiers of the port, better armed than the Seoul mob, and four policemen and several other persons were killed or wounded in defending the Minister. The party, recruited by some Japanese officers and students living in Chemulpo, now betook themselves to a small junk with scanty provisions, and, passing one night on an island off Chemulpo, the next day rowed out in search of a foreign vessel, which was known to be surveying the coast some days since. On the evening of the 26th they were picked up by the English surveying ship Flying Fish, through whose extreme kindness the party reached Nagasaki in safety on the 29th of July.

From Nagasaki Hanabusa telegraphed to Tokyo and waited for instructions. Inouye was still the Minister for Foreign Affairs, and a Cabinet Council was immediately held between the Prime Minister, Lord Sanjo; Minister of Right, Lord Iwakura; Minister of Foreign Affairs, Inouye; and the Councillors Kuroda, Yamagata, Terashima, Oki, Yamada, Matsukata. Kuroda, who had signed the treaty of 1876, strongly advocated the policy of war, but Lord Iwakura and Inouye proposed peaceful negotiations, and, unable to come to any decision till late at night, the Ministers and Councillors separated with a decision of reopening the Council the next morning in the presence of the Emperor, and of referring to his personal decision. Inouye then argued that the event of the 23rd of July was probably the result of anti-foreign agitations, as had been the case in Japan on the first opening of intercourse with foreign nations, when the fanatic Samurais had burnt the British Legation in Tokyo; and if that were so, it was rash to chastise the Corean Government for the movement, which they were powerless to check. He proposed sending Hanabusa to Corea once more under the escort of four or five men-of-war, in order to see first what the Corean Government could and would do towards fulfilling our demand