The shrinkage of the Bordeaux velte to 1·62 gallons may have been the effect of adaptation to an English double wine-gallon, or it may have been from the velte, when passing to Holland, having to adapt itself to the other wine-measures of that country. The Dutch Velt or Welt took a place between the Stoop, = 0·5337 gallons, and the Steekan, of 8 stoopen; and it thus became a measure of 3 stoopen = 1·601 gallon.
It gave rise to the Legger, of 80 velts. This passed to English trade as the Leaguer, but failed to establish itself, being soon only known as a long cask of about 150 wine-gallons used for the lower tier of water-casks in ships. Above the ‘leaguers’ came the ‘riders.’
The Velt and the Leggar are still used in colonies now or formerly Dutch. The Leggar in Java = 127·34 gallons.
The Velt = 1·6 gallons at the Cape & Java (approximately). „ „ = 1·63 „ „ Mauritius. „ „ = 1·66 „ „ Ceylon. ( „ „ = 1·67 „ in France, near La Rochelle.)
But the Viertel maintained, even increased, its standard of 1·713 gallons when entering the Marseilles-Paris systems of wine-measures as the Velte; rising to 1·77 gallons in order to become half of the Escandau of Marseilles, and taking a place at = 1·76 gallons in the Paris series of wine-measures (see Chapter XXI). Coming from the North, it was yet an evolution of the Arabic foot, while the Escandau was 1/8 of the Marseilles Cargo reduced in wheat-water ratio, and this cargo was the Arabic cubic cubit.
The Moslem conquest of the greater part of the Mediterranean countries, with the influence of Arab trade and of Moorish civilisation, displaced the Roman system of weights and measures, already modified by the influence of Ptolemaïc Egypt, and caused changes even in the weights and measures of Italy. Not only the North of Africa, but Spain, Provence (and the other Occitanian lands), the dominions of the three republics of Venice, Genoa and Arles, with the countries forming the Turkish Empire, all these took more or less the Arab system of weights and measures, and this system penetrated deep into Western Europe.
The principal Arab measures which form the basis of the Mediterranean measures of capacity were:
1. The cubed Persian cubit = 8 Persian cubic feet (the Persian foot being half the cubit of 25·26 inches). The Persian cubic foot of water being the Persian or Greek-Asiatic talent, at its calculated value of 72·61 lb., the cubed cubit is 8 × 72·61 = 580·88 lb. = 58·088 gallons.