As a preliminary exhibition of the power of these men, the princes set
them to removing the sacks of rice to a convenient place on the shore
for shipping. Each of the sacks weighed not less than one hundred
twenty-five pounds, and there were only two of the wrestlers who did not
carry each two sacks at a time. They bore the sacks on the right
shoulder, lifting the first from the ground and adjusting it without
help, but obtaining aid for the raising of the second. One man carried a
sack suspended by his teeth, and another, taking one in his arms, turned
repeated somersaults as he held it, apparently with as much ease as if
his weight of flesh had been only so much gossamer and his load a
feather.
After this preliminary display, the commissioners proposed that the
Commodore and his party should retire to the treaty-house, where they
would have an opportunity of seeing the wrestlers exhibit their
professional feats. From the brutal performance of these wrestlers, the
Americans turned with pride to the exhibition--to which the Japanese
commissioners were now in their turn invited--of the telegraph and the
railroad.
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