234 COMPARATIVE VALUE OF GOLD AND SILVER. 
here with a shipload of itzahu to buy your goods with: 
then you’ll have to receive your own money for what it is 
Avorth.” 
Tie smiled calmly at my evident greenness, as he re- 
plied, through Tatz-nosky, as follows: — “It is not possi- 
ble for Japanese itzabu to go out of l!^ipon : how, then, 
can they ever be brought back again ? If we saw you 
with itzabu, we would know that you had made them ; 
hence we would not be forced to receive them. They 
would not be our coin in that case.’' After this 
“ sogdollager”-like argument, he quietly lit his pipe, 
handed it to me, and smiled a smile of careless in- 
difference. 
I have previously remarked that silver was much more 
preferable to them than gold; and the reason was this: 
a gold-piece of theirs, valued at four itzabu, weighs 
about as much as one of our quarter-eagles. Hence, 
if an article was marked $2 50, and was paid for with a 
quarter-eagle, the gold received would only be equal 
to four itzabu ; but, were it paid for in silver, this latter 
would be equal to seven and three-quarters itzabu, or 
nearly double. From this it will be seen that gold is 
less valuable in Japan than in other countries; and, 
were it not for the peculiar policy of that people, this 
difference might be speculated on to great advantage 
by outsiders ; but, as there is no possibility of one’s 
buying it up and getting it out of the country, the fact 
loses much of its importance. 
Tasked Tatz-nosky, among other questions, why gold was 
not more valuable; was it as plentiful as silver among them? 
&c. &c. : and he replied it was as hard to dig one as the 
