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.)
NOTE 3. - This alleged practice, like that mentioned in the last chapter
but one, is ascribed to a variety of people in different parts of the
world. Both, indeed, have a curious double parallel in the story of two
remote districts of the Himalaya which was told to Bernier by an old
Kashmiri. (See Amst. ed. II. 304-305.) Polo has told nearly the same story
already of the people of Kamul. (Bk. I. ch. xli.) It is related by Strabo
of the Massagetae; by Eusebius of the Geli and the Bactrians; by
Elphinstone of the Hazaras; by Mendoza of the Ladrone Islanders; by other
authors of the Nairs of Malabar, and of some of the aborigines of the
Canary Islands. (Caubul, I. 209; Mendoza, II. 254; Mueller's Strabo,
p. 439; Euseb. Praep. Evan. vi. 10; Major's Pr. Henry, p. 213.)
NOTE 4. - Ramusio has here: "as big as a twopenny loaf," and adds, "on the
money so made the Prince's mark is printed; and no one is allowed to make
it except the royal officers.... And merchants take this currency and go
to those tribes that dwell among the mountains of those parts in the
wildest and most unfrequented quarters; and there they get a saggio
of gold for 60, or 50, or 40 pieces of this salt money, in proportion as
the natives are more barbarous and more remote from towns and civilised
folk. For in such positions they cannot dispose at pleasure of their gold
and other things, such as musk and the like, for want of purchasers; and
so they give them cheap.... And the merchants travel also about the
mountains and districts of Tebet, disposing of this salt money in like
manner to their own great gain.
