Japan and the Japanese

PROFITS OP THE DUTCH TRADE. 249
" The profits our goods produce may be computed to amount,
one year with another, to sixty per cent., though, if all the charges
and expenses of our sale be taken into consideration, we cannot
well get above forty or forty-five percent, clear gain. Considering
so small a profit, it would scarcely be worth the Company's while
to continue this branch of our trade any longer, were it not that
the goods we export from thence, and particularly the refined copper,
yield much the same profit, so that the whole profit may be
computed to amount to eighty or ninety per cent.
" The goods belonging to private persons being brought over
and sold without any expense to the owner, the gain therefrom, not-
withstanding the great duty laid upon them, is no ways inferior to
that of the Company. The two chief directors have the greater
share of it. They cannot hold their offices lunger than three years,
and that not successively, being obliged, after they have served one
year,to return with the homeward-bound ships to Batavia; whence
they are sent back again, either by the next ships, or two years
after. If the directors stand upon good terms with the chief inter-
preter, and have found ways and means to secure his favor, by
making him large presents at the Company's expense, he can contrive
things
so that some of their goods be put up and sold upon
the first or second Kawbany, among the Company's goods, and so,
by reason of the small duty, produce sixty-five to seventy per cent,
to the Com-
profit. This, too, may be done without any prejudice
pany; for, in casting up the sums paid in for goods, these articles
are slipped over. If they have a-ny goods beyond the amount they
are legally entitled to, chiefly red coral, amber, and the like, it is
an easy matter to dispose of them in private, by the assistance of
the officers of the island, who will generally themselves take them
off their hands. The Ottona himself is very often concerned in
such bargains, they being very advantageous. Formerly, we could
sell them by a deputy to the persons who came over to our island
at the time of our Kambany, and that way was far the most profit^
able for us. But one of our directors, in 1G86, played his cards
so awkwardly that ten Japanese were beheaded for smuggling, and
he himself banished the country forever.
" The residing director, who goes also as ambassador to the em-
peror's court, hath, besi les, another very considerable advantage