“At night, when the commissioners sent on board the ship return with their retinue to Nagasaki, the cabin is sealed up in their presence, and all the Dutchmen accurately counted over, to see that there be none wanting, which would occasion a very great confusion. During my stay in Japan it happened that a common sailor unfortunately was drowned in the night, nobody perceiving his falling into the water. At the review made the next morning (for it is constantly made every morning and night) the fellow was missed. This unlucky accident suddenly stopped all proceedings, and the fear lest it should be a Roman Catholic priest, who had made his escape into the country, occasioned such a consternation among the Japanese, that all the officers ran about, scratching their heads, and behaving as if they had lost their senses, and some of the soldiers in the guard-ships were already preparing to rip themselves open, when at last the unlucky fellow’s body being taken up from the bottom of the harbor put an end to their fears. “At all other times, that for lading and unlading our ships excepted, the water gates are shut, by which means all communication is cut off between those that stay on board and those that remain on shore. The ship’s cargo having been placed in the warehouses, the goods lie there till they are pleased, in two or three days of sale, which they call _Kamban_, to sell them. What remains unsold is carried back to the warehouses, and kept there against the next year’s sale. “The following goods are imported by us: raw silk, from China, Tonquin, Bengal, and Persia; all sorts of silks, woollen, and other stuffs (provided they be not wrought with gold and silver); Brazil wood; buffalo, and other hides; raw skins, wax, and buffalo horns from Siam; tanned hides from Persia, Bengal, and other places, but none from Spain and Manila, under pain of incurring their utmost displeasure; pepper; sugar, in powder and candied; cloves; nutmegs; camphor, from Borneo and Sumatra; quicksilver; cinnabar; saffron; lead; saltpetre; borax; alum; musk; gum benzoin; gum lac; rosmal, or _storax liquida_; catechu, commonly called Terra Japonica; fustic; corals; amber; right antimony (which they use to color their china ware); looking-glasses, which they cut up to make spy-glasses, magnifying glasses, and spectacles, out of them. Other things of less note are snakewood; mangoes, and other unripe East India fruits, pickled with Turkish pepper, garlic, and vinegar; black lead and red pencils; sublimate of mercury (but no calomel); fine files; needles; spectacles; large drinking-glasses of the finest sort; counterfeit corals; strange birds, and other foreign curiosities, both natural and artificial. Some of these are often sold in private, by sailors and others, without being produced upon the _Kamban_, and in this case the Dutch make no scruple to get as much for them beyond their real value as possibly they can.