THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MONEY—DAVIDSON. 195 
advanced far enough to carry on trade by means of barter.* 
Weapons formed part of the currency of Homeric times and 
among the ancient Norsemen. By the laws of Hakon the Good 
penalties for breaches of the law could be paid among other 
things in weapons.+t Gunpowder competes with gin in the 
battle of the African standards introduced by European traders ; 
and, not long since, an English newspaper, in commenting on a 
petition of a philanthropic committee that some other form of 
currency than that of gin should be adopted in the Delta of the 
Niger, suggested more than half seriously that Lord Salisbury 
should use his influence with the concert of Europe “to make 
the Liverpool powder keg the only legal tender in the gin lati- 
tudes.” Among all the aboriginal tribes which have been 
brought into contact with European traders, the musket quietly 
takes its place in the native standard of value. But in Borneo 
they have gone a step further. A brass cannon, or as it is called 
by the natives, a brass gun, is the standard of value, and in all 
parts of the island one may still hear prices reckoned in brass 
guns. Any one who has transactions of such importance, for the 
brass guns will correspond to our larger notes, will instantly 
translate the sum into dollars at the present day ; but there was 
a time when ten or twenty pounders did actually pass from 
hand to hand } 
In more recent times, and if not among ourselves, at least 
among the ancestors of many of us, bullets have circulated as 
small change. Leaden bullets were legal tender in the New 
England ; and the reason was no doubt partly the atmosphere of 
warfare and danger in which the early colonists lived. But 
there was another reason. The want of small coin in the reign 
of Queen Elizabeth had induced tradesmen and others to issue 
token money ; and in consequence there was great distress often 
among the poorer classes for the issuer not infrequently refused 
*Tyler : Anthropology, p. 281. 
tRidgeway: op. cit., p. 35. 
tThis fact is on the authority of an undated second-hand clipping from the “ London 
Standard. 
