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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
CHAP. XLVII. SALT AS CURRENCY
57
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authors of the Nairs of Malabar, and of some of the aborigines of the Canary Islands. (Caubul, I. 209 ; Mendoza, II. 254 ; Mailer's Strabo, p. 439 ; Euseb. Praep. Evan. vi. I o ; Major's Pr. Henry, p. 213.)
NOTE 4.—Ramusio has here : " as big as a twopenny loaf," and adds, " on the money so made the Prince's mark is printed ; and no one is allowed to make it except the royal officers. . . . And merchants take this currency and go to those tribes that dwell among the mountains of those parts in the wildest and most unfrequented quarters ; and there they get a saggio of gold for 6o, or 5o, or 4o pieces of this salt money, in proportion as the natives are more barbarous and more remote from towns and civilised folk. For in such positions they cannot dispose at pleasure of their gold and other things, such as musk and the like, for want of purchasers ; and so they give them cheap. . . . And the merchants travel also about the mountains and districts of Tebet, disposing of this salt money in like manner to their own great gain. For those people, besides buying necessaries from the merchants, want this salt to use in their food ; whilst in the towns only broken fragments are used in food, the whole cakes being kept to use as money." This exchange of salt cakes for gold forms a curious parallel to the like exchange in the heart of Africa, narrated by Cosmas in the 6th century, and by Aloisio Cadamosto in the 15th. (See Cathay, pp. clxx-clxxi.) Ritter also calls attention to an analogous account in Alvarez's description of Ethiopia. " The salt," Alvarez says, " is current as money, not only in the kingdom of Prester John, but also in those of the Moors and the pagans, and the people here say that it passes right on to Manicongo upon the Western Sea. This salt is dug from the mountain, it is said, in squared blocks. . . . At the place where they are dug, boo or 120 such pieces pass for a drachm of gold . . . equal to of a ducat of gold. When they arrive at a certain fair . . . one day from the salt mine, these go 5 or 6 pieces fewer to the drachm. And so, from fair to fair, fewer and fewer, so that when they arrive at the capital there will be only 6 or 7 pieces to the drachm." (Ramos io, I. 207.) Lieutenant Bower, in his account of Major Sladen's mission, says that at Momein the salt, which was a government monopoly, was " made up in rolls of one and two viss " (a Rangoon viss is 3 lbs. 5 oz. 5i drs.), " and stamped" (p. 12o).
[At Hsia-Kuan, near Ta-li, Captain Gill remarked to a friend (II. p. 312) " that the salt, instead of being in the usual great flat cakes about two or two and a half feet in diameter, was made in cylinders eight inches in diameter and nine inches high. ` Yes,' he said, ` they make them here in a sort of loaves,' unconsciously using almost the words of old Polo, who said the salt in Yun-Nan was in pieces ` as big as a twopenny loaf.' " (See also p. 334.)—H. C.]
M. Desgodins, a missionary in this part of Tibet, gives some curious details of the way in which the civilised traders still prey upon the simple hill-folks of that quarter ; exactly as the Hindu Banyas prey upon the simple forest-tribes of India. He states one case in which the account for a pig had with interest run up to 2127 bushels of corn ! (Ann. de la Prop de la Foi, XXXVI. 32o.)
Gold is said still to be very plentiful in the mountains called Gulan Sigong, to the N.W. of Yun-nan, adjoining the great eastern branch of the Irawadi, and the Chinese traders go there to barter for it. (See J. fl. S. B. VI. 272.)
NOTE 5.—Salt is still an object highly coveted by the wild Lolos already alluded to, and to steal it is a chief aim of their constant raids on Chinese villages. (Richthofen in Verhandlungen, etc., u. s. p. 36.) On the continued existence of the use of salt currency in regions of the same frontier, I have been favoured with the following note by M. FRANCIS GARNIER, the distinguished leader of the expedition of the great Kamboja River in its latter part : " Salt currency has a very wide diffusion from Muang Yong [in the Burman-Shan country, about lat. 21° 43 I] to Sheu-pin [in Yun-nan, about lat. 23° 43']. In the Shan markets, especially within the limits named, all purchases are made with salt. At Sse-mao and Pou-erl [Esmok and Puer of some of
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