Up to the time of the Revolution each province had its own measures and weights, more or less influenced by the uncertain standard measures of the king in Paris. This was the effect of the feudal system and of the very gradual annexation of the provinces under conditions which left considerable powers to the parliaments and other local authorities. Even in each province varieties of measures were to be found, and they exist to this day in each _pays_, often in each parish. The basis of this very loose system was Roman, influenced in the North by Teutonic importations, but especially by the peculiar and intrinsically perfect system of the South, where the Roman basis had entirely disappeared under the influences of commerce with Egypt and with that portion of Africa which begins across the Pyrenees, and which in medieval times imparted much of its high civilisation to European countries. 1. THE SOUTHERN SYSTEM This system, prevailing far beyond the limits of Occitania, the land of the Lengo d’O, had for its basis the Load of Wheat, a measure very nearly that of the cubed Arabic cubit, and comparable with the English Coomb or half-Quarter. Just as the English Quarter of corn is 8 bushels, so the Cargo (load, or Saumado, ass-load, Seam) is 8 Eimino. And just as we had a wine-bushel, originally a cubic foot in water-wheat ratio with the corn-bushel, so Occitania had its Escandau for wine corresponding, in the Southern water-wheat ratio of 1 to 1·22, to the Eimino or Panau. The only difference in this evolution was that, while our corn-measure was increased from the wine-measure, the southern wine-measure, and other measures evolved inversely from it, were produced from the corn-measure as a basis. The word Escandau means ‘standard’ (like the Denerel of Guernsey), and just as the cubic measure, the quadrantal, of 1000 Roman ounces of water, is the standard of our foot and virtually of all our other measures, so the Escandau-quadrantal is the standard of the Pán and of all the other measures of Marseilles. I take the standards of Marseilles as it was the great port of trade in the South, and incidentally those of Arles, the capital of the medieval kingdom of Arles or of Burgundy, afterwards the republic of Arles. This was so considerable a seaport, connected as it was with the sea both by the Rhone and by a canal passage, the Fossæ Marianæ, through the lagoons, that at one time the Lion of Arles was a rival of its brother of St. Mark, and gave its name to the Gulf which receives the Rhone. The process of involution by which the Pán of Marseilles was derived from the side of an Escandau of quadrantal form has been described in Chapter IV. The Cano or fathom, = 79·24 inches, was 8 pán or spans each = 9·904 inches; the span was of 8 menut or inches, also divided into 8 parts.[47] Footnote 47: