302 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ern Pacific groups, whicli are included in tlie designation of Polynesia^ 

 but with some striking differences, which careful observers have as- 

 cribed, with great iDrobability, to influences from Northeastern Asia. 

 They are noted for their skill in navigation. They have well-rigged 

 vessels exceeding sixty feet in length. They sail by the stars, and are 

 accustomed to undertake long voyages. 



The southernmost group of Micronesia, commonly known as the 

 Kingsmill Islands, was visited and j^artly surveyed by the vessels of 

 the Wilkes Exploring Expedition. During a very brief intercourse 

 with the natives of the principal island, Taputeuea, large quantities 

 of what was at first supposed to be an ornament were obtained from 

 the natives, in exchange for other wares which they valued. This 

 peculiar article was thus described, before its real chai'acter was under- 

 stood : " It consists of a string of alternate wooden and shell beads, if 

 this term may be applied to them. The ' beads ' are in the shape of a 

 sixpence with a hole through its center, or more nearly like the ' but- 

 ton-molds ' of our dress-makers. They are made of fragments of cocoa-^ 

 nut-shell and sea-shells, which are broken or cut nearly to the required 

 shape, and then filed down together till they are smooth, even, and 

 exactly of equal size. Those of sea-shell are white, and those of cocoa- 

 nut black. They are strung alternately upon a small cord, and appear- 

 like a round flexible stick, half an inch in diameter, marked with 

 alternate white and black rings." The beads, it appears, by the speci- 

 mens preserved in the National Museum at Washington, were not all 

 of one size. Besides the larger sort, resembling an English sixpence, 

 there was a smaller description, of about half that size, and bearing 

 when strung a sur])rising resemblance to a string of small wampum- 

 beads, the only difference being that the Kingsmill Island disks are 

 thinner than the proper wampum cylinders ; but both in size and in 

 thickness they resemble closely the smaller shell-money of California. 



Further researches disclosed the true nature of this article, which, 

 as it appeared, had been already studied and described by earlier voy- 

 agers at other islands of the Micronesian range. Adalbert von Cha- 

 misso, the naturalist who accompanied Admiral Kotzebue in his voyage 

 around the world, was the first to make known its character and use. 

 In speaking of the natives of the Ladrone Islands, now an extinct peo- 

 ple, he remarks : " We have discovered among their antiquities some- 

 thing which seems to show a great advance made in civilization be- 

 yond any of the other islanders of the great ocean. We speak of the 

 invention of money. . . . Disks of tortoise-shell, of the shape of but- 

 ton-molds, but thin as paper, and made extremely smooth by rubbings 

 are strung close together on a thick cord of twisted cocoanut-husk. The- 

 whole forms a flexible cylinder of the thickness of a finger, and several 

 feet in length. These disks were in circulation as a medium of ex- 

 change, and only a few of the chiefs had the right to make and issue 

 them." Some other facts are mentioned, which seem to indicate that 



