Page:A wandering student in the Far East vol.1 - Zetland.djvu/155

Rh fixed upon for convenience. In Tientsin, for instance, as Dr Morrison has pointed out, the 100 is any number one can pass except 100, "though by agreement the 100 is usually estimated at 98." Further variations are introduced by the difference in quality of the silver ingots, some qualities being infinitely more valuable than others, the money-changer being of course the self-appointed arbiter as to the quality of the particular piece of silver which he is about to change. The inexhaustible fund of inconvenience provided by such a system will no doubt suggest itself to the reader—such, for instance, as the enormous weight of the silver ingots, and still more of thousands of cash, especially in a country in which the traveller is obliged to rely exclusively upon human porterage for transport; but perhaps the greatest joke connected with the cash system will not have occurred to him. It consists in this, that the intrinsic value of the metal of which the cash are composed is considerably in excess of its face value as a coin. It follows as an inevitable consequence that by melting down the cash and