Formerly, according to Thunberg, the Dutch took the liberty to correct with blows the Japanese _kuri_ employed as laborers on board the ships; but in his time this was absolutely prohibited. He adds, that the respect of the Japanese for the Dutch was a good deal diminished by observing “in how unfriendly and unmannerly a style they usually behave to each other, and the brutal treatment which the sailors under their command frequently experience from them, together with the oaths, curses, and blows with which the poor fellows are assailed by them.” The interpreters would seem to have adopted, since the time of Kämpfer (as he makes no mention of it), the practice of medicine among their countrymen after the European manner. This made them very inquisitive as to matters of physic and natural history, and very anxious to obtain European books, which they studied diligently. Kämpfer speaks of the interpreters with great indignation as the most watchful and hateful of spies. Thunberg appears to have established very good terms with them. New restrictions, however, had been placed on their intercourse with the resident Dutchmen, whom, to prevent smuggling, they were not allowed to visit, except in company with one or two other officers. Deshima, from Thunberg’s description of it, appears to have altered very little since Kämpfer’s residence there, though glass windows had lately been brought from Batavia, by some of the Dutch residents, as a substitute for the paper windows of the Japanese. The permanent residents were now twelve or thirteen (there had been but seven in Kämpfer’s time), besides slaves brought from Batavia, of whom each Dutchman had one. The goods sent out by the Company at the time of Thunberg’s visit were sugars (almost the only article of consumption which the Japanese do not produce for themselves), elephants’ teeth, sappan-wood for dyeing, tin, lead, bar-iron, fine chintzes of various sorts, Dutch broadcloths, shalloons, silks, cloves, tortoise-shell, China-root, and _Costus Arabicus_. The goods of private adventurers were saffron, Venice treacle, Spanish liquorice, rattans, spectacles, looking-glasses, watches, Ninjin-root or ginseng, and unicorns’ horns. This latter article, the horn of the _Monodon monoceros_, a product of the Greenland fishery, had been lately introduced. The Japanese ascribed to it wonderful virtues as a medicine, believing it to have the power to prolong life, strengthen the animal spirits, assist the memory, and cure all sorts of complaints. Thunberg had carried out as his venture thirty-seven katties (about fifty pounds) of this horn, which sold for five thousand and seventy-one taels, or upwards of six thousand dollars; so that, after paying the advances made to him at Batavia, he had a handsome surplus to expend in his favorite pursuit of natural history.