Cardonera, a branch of the Llobregat, and from the strength of its position has been able to bid defiance to repeated attacks. Besides its citadel and ramparts, it possesses the ruins of the palace of Ramon Folch, the church of San Vicente, and the church in which the famous Catalonian saint Ramon Nonato expired. It is still more celebrated, however, for the extensive deposit of rock salt in its vicinity, which forms a mountain mass about 500 feet high in the head of a valley, covered by a thick bed of a reddish brown clay, and apparently resting on a yellowish grey sandstone. The salt is generally more or less translu cent, but large masses of it are quite transparent ; and pieces cut from it are worked by artists in Cardona into images, crucifixes, and many articles of an ornamental kind.
Population about 3000.CARDS, Playing (x^i" 7 ??* paper, probably, as Chatto thinks, square paper), rectangular pieces of pasteboard, used at games. The invention of playing cards has been attributed to various nations. In the Chinese dictionary, Ching-tsze- tung (1678), it is said that cards were invented in the reign of Seun-ho, 1120 A.D., for the amusement of his numerous concubines. There is a tradition that cards have existed in India from time immemorial, and that they were invented by the Brahmans. A pack of cards, said to be a thousand years old, is preserved in the museum of the Royal Asiatic Society ; but modern critics are of opinion that these cards are of recent date. The invention of cards has also been assigned to the Egyptians, but apparently on no better authority than the belief that the representations on tarots may be so interpreted as to con nect them with Egyptian philosophy. To the Arabs, Germans, Spaniards, and French have also been ascribed the invention of cards, but on grounds of varying feebleness.
There are numerous singular resemblances between the ancient game of chess (chaturanga, the four angas or members of an army) and cards (see " Essay on the Indian Game of Chess, by Sir William Jones, Asiatic Researches, vol. ii.), from which it has been conjectured, with some show of reason, that cards were suggested by chess. The presumption, then, is in favour of the Asiatic origin of cards.
The time and manner of the introduction of cards into Europe are also moot points. The 38th canon of the council of Worcester (1240) is often quoted as evidence of cards having been known in England in the middle of the 13th century; but the games "de rege et regina" there mentioned were a kind of mumming exhibition (Strutt says chess). No queen is found in the earliest European cards.
In the wardrobe accounts of Edward I. (1278), Walter Stourton is paid 8s. 5d. " ad opus regis ad ludendum ad quatuor reges." This passage has been translated to mean cards ; but as chess was known in the East by a term signifying the four kings (chaturaji), it is now believed that this entry relates to chess. If cards were known in Europe in 1278, it is very remarkable that Petrarch, in his dialogue which treats of gaming, never mentions them ; and that though Boccaccio and Chaucer and contemporary writers notice various games, there is not a single passage in any one of them that can be fairly construed to refer to cards. Passages are quoted from various works, of or relative to this period, but modern research leads to the belief that in every instance the word rendered " cards " has either been mistranslated or interpolated.
The earliest unquestionable mention of a distinct series of playing cards is the well-known entry of Charles or Charbot Poupart, treasurer of the household of Charles VI. of France, in his book of accounts for 1392 or 1393. It runs thus " Donne" a Jacquemin Gringonneur, peintre, pour troia jeux de cartes, k or et k diverses couleurs, ornes de plusieurs devises, pour porter devers le Seigneur Roi, pour son Abatement, cinquante-six sols parisis." From this entry it has hastily been concluded that Jacquemin Gringonneur (it is not certain whether Gringonneur was the painter s surname, or only his designation as a maker of grangons) invented cards ; but the payment is clearly for painting, not for inventing them.
The safe conclusion with regard to the introduction of cards is that, though they may possibly have been known to a few persons in Europe about the middle of the 14th century, they did not come into general use until the end of the century, and that whence they were brought has not yet been ascertained. But if the testi mony of Covelluzzo can be relied on, cards were introduced into Italy from Arabia in the year 1379. Covelluzzo, who wrote in the 15th century, gives as his authority the chronicle of one of his ancestors. His words are " Anno 1379, fu recato in Viterbo el gioco delle carte, che venne de Seracinia, e chiamtsi tra loro naib." (In the year 1379 was brought into Viterbo the game of cards, which comes from the country of the Saracens, and is with them called naib. See " Istoria della Citta di Viterbo" Feliciano Bussi, Roma, 1743.)
Soon after the date of Poupart s entry, cards it would seem became common ; for in an edict of the provost of Paris, 1397, working people are forbidden to play at tennis, bowls, dice, cards, or nine-pins on working days. From the omission of cards in an ordonnance of Charles V. (1369), forbidding certain games, it may reasonably be concluded that cards became popular in France between 1369 and the end of the century.
It does not follow that because the earliest positive mention of a series of cards is French, they were not previously known in other parts of Europe. It seems more likely, if their Eastern origin is accepted, that they travelled quickly through Europe to France. Early in the 15th century, card-making had become a regular trade in Germany, whence cards were sent in small casks to other countries. Cards were also manufactured in Italy at least as early as 1425, and in England before 1463; for by an Act of Parliament of 3 Edw. IV. the importation of playing cards is forbidden, in consequence, it is said, of the complaints of manufacturers that importation obstructed their business. No cards of undoubted English manufac ture have been discovered of so early a date ; and there is reason to believe, notwithstanding the Act of Edward IV., that our chief supplies came from France or the Nether lands. In the reign of Elizabeth the importation of cards was a monopoly; but from the time of James I. most of the cards used in this country were of home manufacture. In the reign of James I. a duty was first levied on cards ; since when they have always been taxed.
were printed from wood blocks. This is a question of some importance, as, if answered in the affirmative, it would ap pear that the art of wood engraving, which led to that of printing, may have been developed through the demand for the multiplication of implements of play. The belief that the early card-makers or card-painters of Ulm, Nurem berg, and Augsburg, from about 1418-1450, were also wood-engravers, is founded on the assumption that the cards of that period were printed from wood-blocks. It is. however, clear that the earliest cards were executed by hand, like those designed for Charles VI. Many of the earliest woodcuts were coloured by means of a stencil, so it would seem that at the time wood-engrav ing was first introduced, the art of depicting and colour ing figures by means of stencil plates was well known. There are no playing cards engraved on wood to which so
early a date as 1423 (that of the earliest dated wood en-