repancies within 15 days'
journey would be inconceivable, but that in both the latter instances at
least he appears to speak of the rates at which the gold was purchased
from secluded, ignorant, and uncivilised tribes. It is difficult to
reconcile with other facts the reason which he assigns for the high value
put on silver at Vochan, viz., that there was no silver-mine within five
months' journey. In later days, at least, Martini speaks of many
silver-mines in Yun-nan, and the "Great Silver Mine" (_Bau-dwen gyi_ of the
Burmese) or group of mines, which affords a chief supply to Burma in modern
times, is not far from the territory of our Traveller's Zardandan.
Garnier's map shows several argentiferous sites in the Valley of the
Lan-t'sang.

In another work[3] I have remarked at some length on the relative values
of gold and silver about this time. In Western Europe these seem to have
been as 12 to 1, and I have shown grounds for believing that in India, and
generally over civilised Asia, the ratio was 10 to 1. In Pauthier's
extracts from the _Yuen-shi_ or Annals of the Mongol Dynasty, there is an
incidental but precise confirmation of this, of which I was not then
aware. This states (p. 321) that on the issue of the paper currency of
1287 the official instructions to the local treasuries were to issue notes
of the nominal value of two strings, i.e. 2000 _wen_ or cash, for every
ounce of flowered silver, and 20,000 cash for every ounce of gold. Ten to
1 must have continued to be the relation in China down to about the end of
the 17th century if we may believe Lecomte; but when Milburne states the
same value in the beginning of the 19th he must have fallen into some
great error. In 1781 Sonnerat tells us that _formerly_ gold had been
exported from China with a profit of 25 per cent., but at that time a
profit of 18 to 20 per cent, was made by _importing_ it. At present[4]
the relative values are about the same as in Europe, viz. 1 to 15-1/2 or 1
to 16; but in Canton, in 1844, they were 1 to 17; and Timkowski states
that at Peking in 1821 the finest gold was valued at 18 to 1. And as
regards the precise territory of which this chapter speaks I find in
Lieutenant Bower's Commercial Report on Sladen's Mission that the price of
pure gold at Momein in 1868 was 13 times its weight in silver (p. 122);
whilst M. Garnier mentions that the exchange at Ta-li in 1869 was 12 to 1
(I. 522).

Does not Shakspeare indicate at least a mem