Fernando Cortes, in a letter to Charles V, notes that everything in the markets in central America were sold by a kind of measure.

Date
1908
Type
Letter
Source
Fernando Cortes
Non-LDS
Hearsay
Direct
Reprint
Translation
Reference

Fernando Cortes, letter to Charles V, October 30, 1520, in Letters of Cortes: The Five Letters of Relation from Fernando Cortes to the Emperor Charles V, ed. Francis Augustus MacNutt, 2 vols. (New York: G. P. Putman's Sons, 1908), 1:258-59

Scribe/Publisher
G. P. Putman's Sons
People
Fernando Cortes, Charles V
Audience
Charles V, Reading Public
PDF
Transcription

They also sell skeins of different kinds of spun cotton, in all colours, so that it seems quite like one of the silk markets of Granada, although it is on a greater scale also as many different colours for painters as can be found in Spain and of as excellent hues. They sell deer skins with all the hair tanned on them, and of different colours; much earthenware, exceedingly good, many sorts of pots, large and small, pitchers, large tiles, an infinite variety of vases, all of very singular clay, and most of them glazed and painted. They sell maize, both in the grain and made into bread, which is very superior in its quality to that of the other islands and mainland; pies of birds, and fish, also much fish, fresh, salted, cooked, and raw eggs; eggs of hens, and geese, and other birds in great quantity, and cakes made of eggs.

Finally, besides those things I have mentioned, they sell in the city markets everything else which is found in the whole country and which, on account of the profusion and number, do not occur to my memory, and which also I do not tell of, because I do not know their names.

Each kind of merchandise is sold in its respective street, and they do not mix their kinds of merchandise of any species; thus they preserve perfect order. Everything is sold by a kind of measure, and, until now, we have not seen anything sold by weight.

Citations in Mormonr Qnas
Copyright © B. H. Roberts Foundation
The B. H. Roberts Foundation is not owned by, operated by, or affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.