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 15½ 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 memory of 10 to 1 as the traditional relation of gold to silver when he makes the Prince of Morocco, balancing over Portia’s caskets, argue:— “Or shall I think in silver she’s immured, Being ten times undervalued to tried gold? O sinful thought!” In Japan, at the time trade was opened, we know from Sir R. Alcock’s work the extraordinary fact that the proportionate value set upon gold and silver currency by authority was as 3 to 1. (_Cathay_, etc., p. ccl. and p. 442; _Lecomte_, II. 91; _Milburne’s Oriental Commerce_, II. 510; _Sonnerat_, II. 17; _Hedde, Etude, Pratique_, etc., p. 14; _Williams, Chinese Commercial Guide_, p. 129; _Timkowski_, II. 202; _Alcock_, I. 281; II. 411, etc.) NOTE 6.—Mr. Lay cites from a Chinese authority a notice of a tribe of “Western Miautsze,” who “in the middle of autumn sacrifice to the Great Ancestor or Founder of their Race.” (_The Chinese as they are_, p. 321.) NOTE 7.—Dr. Anderson confirms the depressing and unhealthy character of the summer climate at Momein, though standing between 5000 and 6000 feet above the sea (p. 41).