The first thing to claim our attention in Yokohama Harbour was the American cruiser Newark , the Admiral’s flagship of the Asiatic fleet, with Admiral Kempff aboard. As soon as we came inside the breakwater she fired a salute of seventeen guns, and we wondered what it was all about, until suddenly we remembered that the Commissioners had the rank of ministers plenipotentiary and decided that it was meant for us. It was the first time in my husband’s life that he had ever been saluted. In his later career he reached a point where he would have been almost willing to assume a disguise in order to escape the thunder of the twenty-one guns that roared at him whenever he approached a naval vessel of any kind, but I think he was rather elated by this first tribute to his official standing.