Japan and the Japanese

DUTCH RETURN CARGOES. 251
refined copper, and to send the latter, if possible, on board the Company's
ships to Malacca. I say if possible, because there are strict
orders from the it.
Company against
" But it is time at last to send our ships on their return. To
make up their cargoes we buy from twelve thousand to twenty
thousand piculs of refined copper, cast in small cylinders, a span
long and an inch thick, each picul packed in a fir box. We buy,
likewise, a small quantity of coarse copper, delivered to us in broad
flattish round cakes, and sometimes we take in some hundred piculs
or chests of copper kasies or farthings, but not unless they be asked
for at Tonquin and other places. All the copper is sold to us by a
company of united merchants, who, by virtue of a privilege from the
emperor, have the sole refining and selling of it to foreigners.
" The other part of our cargo is made up of Japanese camphor,
from six thousand to twelve thousand, and sometimes more, pounds a
year, packed up in wooden barrels ;
ware packed in straw ;
of some hundred bales of china
of a box or two of gold thread, of an hundred
rolls to the box; of all sorts of japanned cabinet-boxes, chests of
drawers, and the like, all of the very best workmanship we can
meet with ; of umbrellas, screens and several other manufactures,
made of canes, wood, buffalo and other horns, hard skins of fishes,
which they work with uncommon neatness and dexterity, stone, copper,
gold and Soira?, which is an artificial metal, composed of
copper, silver and gold, and esteemed at least equal in value to silver.
To these may be added paper made transparent with oil and
varnish ; paper printed and colored with false gold and silver for
hanging of rooms ; rice, the best to be had in Asia ; saki, a strong
liquor brewed from rice ; soy, a sort of fit pickle, to be eat at table
with roasted meat ; pickled fruits packed in barrels ; indented
tobacco ; tea, and marmalades ; besides some thousand kobangs
of gold in specie. The exportation of the following articles
is strictly forbidden. All prints, pictures, goods or stuffs, bearing
the emperor's coat-of-arms. Pictures and representations, printed
and others, of soldiers and military people, of any person belonging
to the court of the Dairi, or of Japanese ships; maps of
the empire or any part of it ; plans of towns, castles, temples and
the like; all sorts of silk, cotton and hempen stuffs; all sorts of