The Europeans remaining at Deshima had each two or three handsome rooms, besides the store-rooms in the lower story. These they occupied without rent, the only expense being that of furnishing them. As the winter set in, the cold, with an easterly or northerly wind, was quite piercing, and they had fires of charcoal in a large copper kettle with a broad rim. Placed in the middle of the room it warmed the whole apartment for hours together. The looseness of the doors and windows prevented any ill consequences from the gases. As the residents all dined and supped at a common table, kept at the Company’s expense, their outlays did not amount to much—“except,” says Thunberg, “they squander away their money on the fair sex, or make expensive entertainments and give suppers to each other.” The account which Thunberg gives of the Japanese mistresses of the Dutch is very much the same with that given by Kämpfer. These women, when spoken for to an officer appointed for that purpose, come attended by a little serving-maid,—one of the young apprentices of the houses to which they belonged,—who brought daily from the town her mistress’ food, made her tea, kept her things in order, and ran on errands. One of these female companions could not be had for less than three days, but might be kept a year, or even several years. The price was eight mas, or one dollar a day, besides her maintenance and presents of silk dresses, girdles, head-ornaments, etc. According to Thunberg, children were very seldom born of these connections. He was assured, but did not credit it, that if such a thing happened, the child, if a boy, would be murdered; and that, if a girl, it would be sent at fifteen to Batavia; but of this he knew of no instance. There was, in his time, one girl about six years old, born of a Japanese mother, living on the island with her father. Later accounts go to show that Dutch-Japanese children are by no means such rarities as Thunberg represents.[41] The women painted their lips with colors, made of the _Catharinus tinctorius_, or bastard saffron, rubbed on little porcelain bowls. If laid on very thin, the lips appeared red; if thick, it gave them a violet hue, esteemed by the Japanese as the more beautiful. The married women were distinguished by blacking their teeth with a fœtid mixture, so corrosive that the lips had to be protected from it while it was laid on. It ate so deeply into the teeth that it took several days and much trouble to scrape it away. “To me at least,” says Thunberg, “a wide mouth with black shining teeth had an ugly and disagreeable appearance.” The married women distinguished themselves also by pulling out their eyebrows; and another distinction was that they knotted their girdles before, and the single women behind. Thunberg noticed that venereal diseases, which he ascribed to European intercourse, were very common,[42] and he congratulated himself on the questionable service of having introduced the mercurial treatment.