"The Emperor's mint then is in this same City of Cambaluc, and the way it is wrought is such that you might say he hath the Secret of Alchemy in perfection, and you would be right!...
"What they take is a certain fine white bast or skin which lies between the wood of the tree and the thick outer bark, and this they make into something resembling sheets of paper, but black. When these sheets have been prepared they are cut up into pieces of different sizes. The smallest of these sizes is worth a half tornesel... There is also a kind worth one Bezant of gold, and others of three Bezants, and so up to ten.
"All these pieces of paper are issued with as much solemnity and authority as if they were pure gold or silver; and on every piece, a variety of officials, whose duty it is, have to write their names and to put their seals. And when all is prepared duly, the chief officer deputed by the Kaan smears the Seal entrusted to him with vermillion and impresses it on the paper, so that the form of the Seal remains stamped upon it in red; the money is then authentic. Any one forging it would be punished with death. And the Kaan causes every year to be made such a vast quantity of this money, which costs him nothing, that it must equal in amount all the treasures in the world.
"And with these pieces of paper, made as I have described, he causes all payments on his own accounts to be made, and he makes them to pass current univerally over all his Kingdoms... And nobody, however important he think himself, dares to refuse them on pain of death. And indeed everybody takes them readily."
(Original from Henry Thule's edition of Marco Polo's Travels)
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