As he had plenty of leisure and little taste for the Dutch fashion of killing time, he endeavored to find more rational and profitable employment. The residents were still allowed native servants, who, though not interpreters, had learned to speak the Dutch language. But the Dutch were strictly prohibited from learning the Japanese; and though the interpreters were sufficiently well inclined, Thunberg encountered many difficulties in his study of that language. It was only after many inquiries that he found at last an old dictionary, in the Latin, Portuguese, and Japanese, in quarto, containing nine hundred and six pages. The title-page was gone, but the book purported to have been compiled by the joint labors of the Jesuits at Japan, as well European as natives. It belonged to one of the interpreters, who possessed it as legacy from his ancestors, and he refused to sell it for any price.[43] Afterwards, at Yedo, he saw a book in long quarto, about an inch thick, printed on Japanese paper, entirely in Japanese characters, except the title-page, which bore the imprint of the Jesuits, with the date, Nagasaki, A. D. 1598. “Through incapacity in some and indolence in others,” the Dutch possessed no vocabulary of the Japanese, and all the knowledge the Dutch residents had of it did not go beyond calling by name a few familiar articles. Thunberg has annexed to his Travels a short Japanese vocabulary, but he does not appear to have made any great progress in the language. With much difficulty he obtained, about the beginning of February, leave to botanize.[44] Every excursion cost him sixteen or eighteen taels, as he was obliged to feast from twenty to thirty Japanese officials, by whom he was always attended. On the neighboring hills he noticed many burying-grounds, containing tombstones of various forms, sometimes rough, but more frequently hewn, with letters, sometimes gilt, engraved upon them. Before these stones were placed vessels, made of large bamboos, containing water, with branches of flowers.