Now That I Have Told You In Detail Of The Splendour Of This City Of The
Emperor's, I Shall Proceed To Tell You Of The Mint Which He Hath In The
Same City, In The Which He Hath His Money Coined And Struck, As I Shall
Relate To You.
And in doing so I shall make manifest to you how it is that
the Great Lord may well be able to accomplish even much more than I have
told you, or am going to tell you, in this Book.
For, tell it how I might,
you never would be satisfied that I was keeping within truth and reason!
The Emperor's Mint then is in this same City of Cambaluc, and the way it
is wrought is such that you might say he hath the Secret of Alchemy in
perfection, and you would be right! For he makes his money after this
fashion.
He makes them take of the bark of a certain tree, in fact of the Mulberry
Tree, the leaves of which are the food of the silkworms, - these trees
being so numerous that whole districts are full of them. What they take is
a certain fine white bast or skin which lies between the wood of the tree
and the thick outer bark, and this they make into something resembling
sheets of paper, but black. When these sheets have been prepared they are
cut up into pieces of different sizes. The smallest of these sizes is
worth a half tornesel; the next, a little larger, one tornesel; one, a
little larger still, is worth half a silver groat of Venice; another a
whole groat; others yet two groats, five groats, and ten groats.
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