Browne’s ‘Merchants’ Handbook,’ 1899.
The information in the last of these is excellently compiled and very trustworthy.
My object is to give, not tabulated series of measures but their history and rationale, to apprehend the ways of thought which have given rise to them, to seek their relations. No country has an isolated system, or even an isolated measure, and unity underlies the infinite variety of measures and weights.
Table of Some European Itinerary Measures
| Yards | Miles | ||
| 1. Meridian mile—Naples | 2026-2/3 | 1·1515 | |
| „ league, 1/20 degree | — | 4·54 | |
| 2. Ancient Roman mile | 1621-1/3 | 0·921 | |
| 3. Roman mile, modified— | |||
| Venice, 1000 paces of 5 feet | 1901 | 1·08 | |
| Sicily, 720 rods of 8 palmi | 1625 | 0·924 | |
| Spain, 1000 paces of 5 feet | 1520 | 0·863 | |
| Portugal, 8 stadia of 234-2/3 varas | 2281 | 1·296 | |
| England, 8 furlongs of 220 yards | 1760 | 1·0 | |
| France, 1000 toises | 2131 | 1·21 | |
| 4. German Meile, about a meridian league— | |||
| Austria, 4000 fathoms of 6 feet | — | 4·71 | |
| Prussia and Denmark, 2000 rods of 12 feet | — | 4·68 | |
| Hanover, 1587 rods of 16 feet | — | 4·66 | |
| Brunswick, 1625 rods of 16 feet | — | 4·61 | |
| 5. An ‘hour-walk’ league— | |||
| Holland—Uur gaans | — | — | |
| Switzerland—Stunde, 1600 rods of 10 feet | — | 2·98 | |
| 6. Russia—Verst, 500 sajeng of 7 feet | 1166·6 | 0·663 | |
[45]. In this ‘pawn’ (the spelling of which shows that English had already lost the a sound of the first vowel and had to represent it by aw) I see the fusion of two words etymologically different, the Italian palmo, L. palmus, and the Provençal pán, side, panel. See, in Chaps. [IV] and [XXI], ‘The Pán of Marseilles.’
[46]. As pointed out by Don V. V. Queipo (Essai sur les Systèmes Métriques, 1859), but not quite accurately. His values are often confused or obscure, but his work is most useful.