Note 129 — Chapter XXVI

The tael, reckoning the picul at one hundred and thirty-three and one-third pounds avoirdupois, contains five hundred and eighty-three grains troy. Our dollar weighs four hundred and twelve and a half grains; and supposing the Japanese silver to be of equal fineness, the tael is worth just about one dollar and forty cents. Kämpfer reckons it as equivalent to three and a half florins, which is precisely one dollar and forty cents, taking the florin at the usual valuation of forty cents. This, however, was rather above the valuation of the Dutch East India Company. There were, it seems, two kinds of Japanese silver, known among the Dutch as heavy and light money, the latter sometimes distinguished as bar-silver. Both kinds were carried to account without distinction down to the year 1635, at the rate of sixty-two and a half silvers, or one dollar and twenty-five cents per tael. After that period the bar-silver was reckoned at fifty-seven stivers, or one dollar and fourteen cents per tael. Reckoning the tael, as the Dutch commonly did, at one dollar and twenty-five cents of our money, and the mas is precisely equivalent to the Spanish eighth of a dollar. This statement is derived from a Dutch memoir by Imhoff, quoted by Raffles (“History of Java,” Appendix B), and found by him, it would seem, among the Dutch records at Batavia. Of the chests of silver and gold, particularly the former, so often mentioned in the old accounts of the Dutch and Portuguese trade, I have met with no description, except in Montanus’ “Memorable Embassies.” Unreliable and worthless as that huge volume generally is, its compilers certainly had access to valuable Dutch papers, and it is apparently from that source that they have drawn what they say of the moneys, weights, and measures of Japan. Of the chests of silver and gold they speak as follows: “Moreover, their paying of money is very strange; for the Japanese, having great store of gold and silver, observe a custom to receive their money without telling or seeing it. The mint-master puts the gold in papers, which contain the value of two hundred pounds sterling; these, sealed up, pass from one to another without being questioned. They also use little wooden boxes, in which they put twenty sealed papers of gold, which is as much as a man can handsomely carry; every box amounts to four thousand pounds sterling; and the like boxes, but of another fashion, they use for their silver, in every one of which is twelve hundred crowns, and is sealed with the coiner’s seal. But doth it not seem strange that never any deceit is found in that blind way of paying money?” “The silver, though weighed and coined, is of no certain value. The coiners put it together into little packs worth sixty crowns,”—I suppose taels. Caron says, however, that these packages contained fifty taels.