“No Dutchman can send a letter out of the country, unless the contents be first entered into a register-book kept for this purpose, and a copy of it left with the governors. As to letters from abroad, all the public ones must be sent directly to the governors, before they are opened. As to the private ones, there are ways and means secretly to convey them to us, which the government connives at, though it be contrary to law. “No Japanese is permitted to send any letters or presents to their relatives abroad (there being still some left from former marriages with the Dutch), or to receive any from them, unless they be first carried to the governors, to be by them opened, and left entirely at their disposal. “Formerly, when a Dutchman died at Nagasaki, his body, deemed unworthy of their ground, was thrown into the sea, somewhere without the harbor. But, of late, an empty spot of waste ground was assigned us, and leave given us decently to bury our dead there. “It is an easy matter for anybody, whether native or foreigner, to make his claims upon the Dutch; but we find it very difficult to obtain justice from others. In the first case, the government is always willing to give the complaining party damages, without so much as considering whether the claim be upon the whole Company, or some of its officers and servants, and whether it be just to make the former suffer for the misdemeanors of the latter. But, if we have any complaint to make, we generally meet with so many difficulties and tedious delays as would deter anybody from pressing even the most righteous cause. One instance out of many will be sufficient. The famous Chinese pirate, _Koxinga_ [Kokusenya], having made himself master of the island of Formosa, and of our fortress, Tayouan or Zelandia thereon, we took an opportunity, by way of reprisals, to attack a large junk of his, bound for that island, with about three hundred men on board, and to disable her with our fire, so that, although she drove for about thirteen days after the attack, yet not above nine of the whole company saved their lives. Upon this, heavy complaints were made by the Chinese to the government of Nagasaki, and with so good an effect that the same year twenty-seven thousand taels damages were assigned to them out of our treasury. Some time after, about the year 1672, one of our ships having unfortunately stranded upon the coast of Formosa, the ship’s company was barbarously murdered, and the whole cargo taken possession of by the Chinese subjects of _Koxinga_; whereupon we made our complaints, before the very same court, against this act of hostility, but with so little success that, far from having any damages assigned us, we could not obtain the restitution of so much as one farthing[142].