“The goods belonging to private persons being brought over and sold without any expense to the owner, the gain therefrom, notwithstanding 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 longer 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 interpreter, 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 _Kamban_, among the Company’s goods, and so, by reason of the small duty, produce sixty-five to seventy per cent profit. This, too, may be done without any prejudice to the Company; for, in casting up the sums paid in for goods, these articles are slipped over. If they have any 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 Otona 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 _Kamban_, and that way was far the most profitable for us. But one of our directors, in 1686, played his cards so awkwardly that ten Japanese were beheaded for smuggling, and he himself banished the country forever.