Page:The humbugs of the world - An account of humbugs, delusions, impositions, quackeries, deceits and deceivers generally, in all ages (IA humbugsworld00barnrich).djvu/215

 made to meet the peculiar needs of the tulip business, besides, and in every town were to be found “tulip-notaries,” to conduct the legal part of the business, take acknowledgments of deeds, note protests, &amp;c.

To say that the tulips were worth their weight in gold would be a very small story. It would not be a very great exaggeration to say that they were worth their size in diamonds. The most valuable species of all was named “Semper Augustus,” and a bulb of it which weighed 200 perits, or less than half an ounce avoirdupois, was thought cheap at 5,500 florins. A florin may be called about 40 cents; so that the little brown root was worth $2,200, or 220 gold eagles, which would weigh, by a rough estimate, eight pounds four ounces, or 132 ounces avoirdupois. Thus this half ounce Semper Augustus was worth—I mean he would bring—two hundred and sixty-four times his weight in gold!

There were many cases where people invested whole fortunes equal to $40,000 or $50,000 in collections of forty or fifty tulip roots. Once there happened to be only two Semper Augustuses in all Holland, one in Haarlem and one in Amsterdam. The Haarlem one was sold for twelve acres of building lots, and the Amsterdam one for a sum equal to $1,840,000, together with a new carriage, span of grey horses and double harness, complete.

Here is the list of merchandise and estimated prices given for one root of the Viceroy tulip. It is interesting as showing what real merchandise was worth in those days by a cash standard, aside from its exhibition of tremendous speculative bedlamism: