double and triple the market value. But so plausible is the
Chinese, and so simple is the Tartar, that the latter invariably departs
with the most entire conviction of the immense philanthropy of the
former, and with a promise to return, when he has other goods to sell, to
the establishment where he has been treated so fraternally.

The next morning we went out to purchase some winter clothing, the want
of which began to make itself sensibly felt. But first, in order to
facilitate our dealings, we had to sell some ounces of silver. The money
of the Chinese consists entirely of small round copper coins, of the size
of our halfpenny, with a square hole in the centre, through which the
people string them, so that they may be more conveniently carried. These
coins the Chinese call, tsien; the Tartars, dehos; and the Europeans,
sapeks. Gold and silver are not coined at all; they are melted into
ingots of various sizes, and thus put into circulation. Gold-dust and
gold leaf are also current in commerce, and they also possess bank notes.
The ordinary value of the ounce of silver is 1,700 or 1,800 sapeks,
according to the scarcity or abundance of silver in the country.

The money changers have two irregular modes of making a profit by their
traffic: if they state the fair price of silver to the customer, they
cheat him in the weight; if their scales and their method of weighing are
accurate, they diminish the price of the silver accordingly. But when
they have to do with Tartars, they employ neither of these methods of
fraud; on the contrary, they weigh the silver scrupulously, and sometimes
allow a little overweight, and even they pay them above the market price;
in fact, they appear to be quite losers by the transaction, and so they
would be, if the weight and the price of the silver alone were
considered; their advantage is derived, in these cases, from their manner
of calculating the amount. When they come to reduce the silver into
sapeks, they do indeed reduce it, making the most flagrant
miscalculations, which the Tartars, who can count nothing beyond their
beads, are quite incapable of detecting, and which they, accordingly,
adopt implicitly, and even with satisfaction, always considering they
have sold their bullion well, since they know the full weight has been
allowed, and that the full market price has been given.

At the money changers in the Blue Town, to which we went to sell some
silver, the Chinese dea