distant countries pay ten per cent.] The rice-wine also makes a great return, and coals, of which there is a great quantity; and so do the twelve guilds of craftsmen that I told you of, with their 12,000 stations apiece, for every article they make pays duty.  And the silk which is produced in such abundance makes an immense return.  But why should I make a long story of it?  The silk, you must know, pays ten per cent., and many other articles also pay ten per cent.

And you must know that Messer Marco Polo, who relates all this, was several times sent by the Great Kaan to inspect the amount of his customs and revenue from this ninth part of Manzi,[NOTE 1] and he found it to be, exclusive of the salt revenue which we have mentioned already, 210 tomans of gold, equivalent to 14,700,000 saggi of gold; one of the most enormous revenues that ever was heard of.  And if the sovereign has such a revenue from one-ninth part of the country, you may judge what he must have from the whole of it!  However, to speak the truth, this part is the greatest and most productive; and because of the great revenue that the Great Kaan derives from it, it is his favourite province, and he takes all the more care to watch it well, and to keep the people contented. [NOTE 2]

Now we will quit this city and speak of others.

NOTE 1.—­Pauthier’s text seems to be the only one which says that Marco was sent by the Great Kaan.  The G. Text says merely:  “Si qe jeo March Pol qe plusor foies hoi faire le conte de la rende de tous cestes couses,”—­ “had several times heard the calculations made.”

NOTE 2.—­Toman is 10,000.  And the first question that occurs in considering the statements of this chapter is as to the unit of these tomans, as intended by Polo.  I believe it to have been the tael (or Chinese ounce) of gold.

We do not know that the Chinese ever made monetary calculations in gold.  But the usual unit of the revenue accounts appears from Pauthier’s extracts to have been the ting, i.e. a money of account equal to ten taels of silver, and we know (supra, ch. l. note 4) that this was in those days the exact equivalent of one tael of gold.

The equation in our text is 10,000 x = 70,000 saggi of gold, giving x, or the unit sought, = 7 saggi.  But in both Ramusio on the one hand, and in the Geog.  Latin and Crusca Italian texts on the other hand, the equivalent of the toman is 80,000 saggi; though it is true that neither with one valuation nor the other are the calculations consistent in any of the texts, except Ramusio’s.[1] This consistency does not give any greater weight to Ramusio’s reading, because we know that version to have been edited, and corrected when the editor thought it necessary:  but I adopt his valuation, because we shall find other grounds for preferring it.  The unit of the toman then is = 8 saggi.