45 Yokohama crosssection P. 19th century Japan. Public domain image.

YOKOHAMA.
… At the end of the third year from the opening of the Port the foreign community numbered 126; from that time, however, it has multiplied considerably.

On the 26th November 1866, Yokohama, which had progressed since its establishment in 1859 with a healthfulness and rapidity its most sanguine well-wishers could hardly have foreseen, was visited by a calamitous fire, which swept away a large portion of the Native town and about one-third of the Foreign settlement, destroying insured property to the amount of two million and-a-half of dollars, besides a great deal that was uninsured; and, for a short time staggered its energies. Within one year however it has, notwithstanding a time of unprecedented commercial depression, gradually recovered; and may now be said to promise a steadiness of advance, which will, in all probability lead to its eventually being the most substantial sea-port town in the Japanese empire.