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 off 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. There is also a kind worth one bezant of gold, and others of three bezants and so up to ten. All of these pieces of paper are issued with as much solemnity and authority as if they were of pure gold or silver; and on every piece a variety of officials, whose duty it is, have to write their names and to put their seals. And when all is prepared duly, the chief officer deputed by the Kaan smears the seal intrusted to him with vermillion, and impresses it on the paper, so that the form of the seal remains stamped upon it in red; the money is then authentic. Any one forging it would be punished with death. And the Kaan causes every year to be made such a vast quantity of this money, which costs him nothing, that it must equal in amount all the treasure in the world.
With these pieces of paper, made as I have described, he causes all payments on his own account to be made; and he
