TO THE COURT OF AVA. 
187 
CHAPTER VI. 
Commerce.—Money.— Rate of interest. — Internal trade.— 
Chinese trade.—Trade sea-ward. — Natural products. — Mi¬ 
nerals. —Forests.—’Agricultural productions.—Animals. 
To understand the Burmese trade, a short ac¬ 
count of the circulating medium will be neces¬ 
sary. This consists, for small payments, of lead; 
and for larger ones, of gold and silver, but chiefly 
of the latter. The Burmese have no coin of any 
one of these metals. At every payment, the mo¬ 
ney must be weighed, and very generally assayed, 
—a rude state of things, of the utmost inconve¬ 
nience to trade. The denominations of weights 
used in the weighing of money of all descrip¬ 
tions, are the same as on ordinary occasions: the 
Kyat or Tical, and the Paiktha or Viss, being 
by far the most frequent. Silver may be con¬ 
sidered as the standard ; gold is generally held 
to be about seventeen times more valuable than 
silver. Lead, used as coin, fluctuates according 
to its market value, and in reference to silver may 
be commonly estimated in the proportion of five 
hundred to one. The weighing and assaying of 
