Note {2} — Chapter XLVI

Note 2.—“Or de paliolle.” “Oro di pagliuola” (pagliuola, “a spangle”) must have been the technical phrase for what we call gold-dust, and the French now call or en paillettes, a phrase used by a French missionary in speaking of this very region. (Ann. de la Foi, XXXVII. 427.) Yet the only example of this use of the word cited in the Voc. Ital. Universale is from this passage of the Crusca MS.; and Pipino seems not to have understood it, translating “aurum quod dicitur Deplaglola”; whilst Zurla says erroneously that pajola is an old Italian word for gold. Pegolotti uses argento in pagliuola (p. 219). A Barcelona tariff of 1271 sets so much on every mark of Pallola. And the old Portuguese navigators seem always to have used the same expression for the gold-dust of Africa, ouro de pajola. (See Major’s Prince Henry, pp. 111, 112, 116; Capmany Memorias, etc., II. App. p. 73; also “Aurum de Pajola,” in Usodimare of Genoa, see Gräberg, Annali, II. 290, quoted by Peschel, p. 178.)