332 INTERCOLONIAL COMMERCE. It was impossible that the Japanese could be patient under a system, the effect of which was virtually to plunder them of their property. At the same time, they seem evidently to have been unwilling to lose the Dutch altogether, because they wished, as a matter of policy, and probably as a matter of curio- sity, to be informed, through their means, of what was passing in the world, to which, notwithstand- ing their pride and their selfishness, they are not, and cannot be, indifferent. They reduced the Dutch trade, therefore, to as low a state as they thought compatible with this object. What probability is there of a free intercourse being restored between Japan and the rest of the civilized world ? This is a question which affords whose wares he carried in and out, together with his own, for ready money, which might amount to several thousand rix dollars." — Thunberg's Voyages, Vol. III. p. 13. This disgraceful practice was at length prohibited, not by the Dutch but by the Japanese government. " For many years," adds Thunberg, " the captain was not only equipped with the wide surtout above described, but also wore large and capacious breeches, in which he carried contraband wares ashore. These, however, were suspected, and consequently laid aside ; and the coat, the last resource, was now, to the owner's great regret, to be taken off. It was droll enough to see the astonishment which the sudden reduction in the size of our bulky captain excited in the major part of the ignorant Japanese, who before had always imagined that all our captains were actually as fat and lusty as they appeared to be." — p. 17«
