eaving Tashkend, with instructions to remit in currency to
Irkutsk, Siberia. We now had to telegraph to that point to re-forward over
the Kiakhta post-route to Peking. With the cash on hand, and the proceeds
of the camera, sold for more than half its weight in silver, four and one
third pounds, we thought we had sufficient money to carry us, or, rather,
as much as we could carry, to that point; for the weight of the Chinese
money necessary for a journey of over three thousand miles was, as the
Russian consul thought, one of the greatest of our almost insurmountable
obstacles. In the interior of China there is no coin except the _chen_, or
_sapeks_, an alloy of copper and tin, in the form of a disk, having a hole
in the center by which the coins may be strung together. The very recently
coined _liang_, or _tael_, the Mexican piaster specially minted for the
Chinese market, and the other foreign coins, have not yet penetrated from
the coast. For six hundred miles over the border, however, we found both
the Russian money and language serviceable among the Tatar merchants,
while the _tenga_, or Kashgar silver-piece, was preferred by the natives
even beyond the Gobi, being much handier than the larger or smaller bits
of silver broken from the _yamba_ bricks. All, however, would have to be
weighed in the _tinza_, or small Chinese scales we carried with us, and on
which were marked the _fuen_, _tchan_, and _liang_ of the monetary scale.
But the value of these terms is reckoned in _chen_, and changes with
almost every district. This necessity for vigilance, together with the
frequency of bad silver and loaded _yambas_, and the propensity of the
Chinese to "knock down" on even the smallest purchase, tends to convert a
traveler in China into a veritable Shylock. There being no banks or
exchanges in the interior, we were obliged to purchase at Kuldja all the
silver we would need for the entire journey of over three thousand miles.
"How much would it take?" was the question that our past experience in
Asiatic travel now aided us to answer. That our calculations were close is
proved by the fact that we reached Peking with silver in our pockets to
the value of half a dollar. Our money now constituted the principal part
of our luggage, which, with camera and film, weighed just twenty-five
pounds apiece. Most of the silver was chopped up into small bits, and
placed in the hollow tubing of the machines to conceal it from Chinese
inquisitiv