Extract from a letter from M. Von Brandt, minister of the North German Union in Japan, to Baron de Rehfues Peking.

　The vicinity of Corea induced us to make a little trip in this direction, and we arrived there on the forenoon of 1st June.
　The harbor of Fusang is excellent, but the country dreadful; quite bare and yellow, only in some few places overgrown with wood, and quite deficiently cultivated. The Japanese station is a miserable colliery, most houses of which are in ruins. They are inhabited by half a dozen officials, and thirty or forty coolies, who are not allowed to absent themselves farther than half a mile from their lodgings, and are altogether very badly treated by the Corean. My chief object was to obtain a clear insight into the whole matter, and through the interposition of an officer of the Japanese foreign office, whom we had on board, I requested the Japanese chief of the factory to tell the Corean officials that, in case they were desirous to receive a communication regarding shipwrecked German subjects, I could give them such information either on board or in the Japanese factory.
　The answer to this proposition is highly characteristic, and will convey to you the plain truth about the state of affairs in these parts better than anything else. The Corean authorities thought it exceedingly impudent that the Japanese had delivered a message of this kind, and they also declared it quite improper that some Japanese had dared to come to Corea on board a foreign vessel. For these reasons the relations between the Japanese officials and the Corean government must be broken off immediately, and were not to be resumed until a Japanese on board the foreign vessel had left the country. This proof will be sufficient for you. I hastened, of course, to assure the Japanese officials that I should be inconsolable if any difficulties were likely to result to the Japanese from the circumstance that some of their officers were on board our ship. We would start, therefore, as soon as possible. This Captain Kohler did, on the 2d of June, after some gun-practice.
　During a walk on shore, the people we met in the fields were tolerably courteous, but as we approached a village the whole of the inhabitants assembled in the street, offering passive resistance, and declaring that the Japanese were not allowed to go any farther. Of course we retreated courageously, and cannot complain about the people generally, who behaved themselves toward us in a more civilized manner than the brave Germans would have done toward the Coreans. They are strapping fellows, all dressed in white, as they are represented on pictures. Their villages and towns are miserable, like their junks and boats.
　No arms whatever are to be seen, and are said to consist solely of matchlocks. During the gun-practice, a few thousand people with flags had assembled from a large town in the neighborhood, but on this occasion, too, no arms were seen.