272 VOYAGE TO THE 



Europeans with the islanders had effected an altera- 

 tion in the nature of the currency, and that those 

 1826.' tinselled ornaments with which we had provided 

 ourselves were now objects of desire only as presents ; 

 the more substantial articles of clothing and hard 

 dollars being required for the purposes of the market, 

 except, perhaps, where a ring or a Jew's harp hap- 

 pened for the moment to attract the attention of 

 some capricious individual. However gratified we 

 might be to observe this advance towards civiliza- 

 tion, we experienced considerable inconvenience 

 from its effects ; for on leaving the coast of Chili, 

 very few of us had provided dollars, under an im- 

 pression that they would not be necessary ; and those 

 which we had were principally of the republican 

 coinage, and as useless in the Otaheitan market as 

 they would have been in New Zealand. No dollars 

 bear their full value here, unless the pillars on the 

 reverse are clearly distinguishable, and a greater de- 

 gree of value is attached to such as are bright than 

 to others. So ignorant, indeed, were these simple 

 people of the real worth of the coin, that it was not 

 unusual for them to offer two that were blemished 

 in exchange for one that was new, and in the market 

 a yard of printed calico, a white shirt, new or old, 

 provided it had not a hole in it (even a threadbare 

 shirt that is whole being whimsically preferred to one 

 which might have been eaten through by a mouse), 

 or a Spanish dollar that had two pillars upon it, were 

 in the ordinary way equivalent to a club, a spear, a 

 conch shell, a paddle, or a pig. Deviations, of course, 

 occurred from this scale, founded on the superior 

 quality or size of the article, and occasionally on the 

 circumstances of the vendor, who, when he antici- 



