The money matters of the people are conducted in this way.  They have gold in rods which they weigh, and they reckon its value by its weight in saggi, but they have no coined money.  Their small change again is made in this way.  They have salt which they boil and set in a mould [flat below and round above],[NOTE 4] and every piece from the mould weighs about half a pound.  Now, 80 moulds of this salt are worth one saggio of fine gold, which is a weight so called.  So this salt serves them for small change.[NOTE 5]

[Illustration:  The Valley of the Kin-Sha Kiang, near the lower end of Caindu, i.e.  Kienchang. (From Garnier.)

“Et quant l’en est ales ceste dix jornee adonc treuve-l’en un grant fluv qe est apele Brius, auquel se fenist la provence de Cheindu.”]

The musk animals are very abundant in that country, and thus of musk also they have great store.  They have likewise plenty of fish which they catch in the lake in which the pearls are produced.  Wild animals, such as lions, bears, wolves, stags, bucks and roes, exist in great numbers; and there are also vast quantities of fowl of every kind.  Wine of the vine they have none, but they make a wine of wheat and rice and sundry good spices, and very good drink it is.[NOTE 6] There grows also in this country a quantity of clove.  The tree that bears it is a small one, with leaves like laurel but longer and narrower, and with a small white flower like the clove.[NOTE 7] They have also ginger and cinnamon in great plenty, besides other spices which never reach our countries, so we need say nothing about them.

Now we may leave this province, as we have told you all about it.  But let me tell you first of this same country of Caindu that you ride through it ten days, constantly meeting with towns and villages, with people of the same description that I have mentioned.  After riding those ten days you come to a river called Brius, which terminates the province of Caindu.  In this river is found much gold-dust, and there is also much cinnamon on its banks.  It flows to the Ocean Sea.

There is no more to be said about this river, so I will now tell you about another province called Carajan, as you shall hear in what follows.

NOTE 1.—­Ramusio’s version here enlarges:  “Don’t suppose from my saying towards the west that these countries really lie in what we call the west, but only that we have been travelling from regions in the east-north-east towards the west, and hence we speak of the countries we come to as lying towards the west.”

NOTE 2.—­Chinese authorities quoted by Ritter mention mother-o’-pearl as a product of Lithang, and speak of turquoises as found in Djaya to the west of Bathang. (Ritter, IV. 235-236.) Neither of these places is, however, within the tract which we believe to be Caindu.  Amyot states that pearls are found in a certain river of Yun-nan. (See Trans.R.A.Soc. II. 91.)