printed books, although he does mention the paper money of China, formally stamped in red ink with the imperial seal. This paper money must have been printed, but he does not say anything about the printing.[1] The commercial relations between Venice and China were continued many years, and it is possible that other travelers may have acquired some knowledge of the peculiarities of Chinese printing, and may have communicated this knowledge; but it was a communication of details only, and not of the principle of printing. Printing could not have been a novelty, for we have many evidences that it was practised in Italy before Marco Polo was born. The mechanics of Europe had nothing to learn of the theory, and but little of the practice, of the art of xylography. All they needed was something to print, and something to print on. They were waiting for paper and for playing cards.
- ↑ Polo was more deeply interested in the simplicity of the financial method by which the Emperor filled his impoverished treasury.
He transferred the bark of the mulberry-tree into something resembling sheets of paper, and these into money, which cost him nothing at all: so that you might say he had the secret of alchemy to perfection. And these pieces of paper he made to pass current universally over all his kingdoms and provinces and territories, and whithersoever his power and sovereignty extended. And nobody, however important he thought himself, durst refuse them on pain of death. The Book of Ser Marco Polo, the Venetian. Translated and edited by Henry Vale, London, 1871.
With all his power, the Great Khan met the fate which comes to every financier who tries to fill up a depleted treasury by the issue of paper money. In a very short time the notes were worth but one-half of their original value. But the Emperor was equal to the emergency: when the notes fell to one-fifth of the nominal value, he called them in, and exchanged five old for one new note of the same denomination.
