BARTERING ON SHIPBOARD. 31 



■were all received with thankfulness ; and I will here 

 take occasion to state that I never heard a sailor 

 speak irreverentl}- of the Bible. Men aboard ship I 

 have heard do so, but only in three instances, and in 

 those cases they were neither sailors nor landsmen — 

 incapable of filling a respectable position on either 

 element; therefore their opinions were of little 

 weight. 



Directly after we got outside, the peculiarity of 

 the great Yankee nation began to manifest itself, and 

 divers trades and speculations were set afloat ; the 

 ship's company having been transformed into an 

 Israelite assemblage worthy of South Street, Phila- 

 delphia, or Chatham Street, 'New York, bartering 

 for and exchanging old and new clothes. Money is 

 not a medium aboard a whale-ship, and the possessor 

 of it usually stows it away in the corner of his chest 

 as so much dross, of no value to him. Tobacco 

 takes its place and is the currency ; an article being 

 valued, not at so many dollars, but at so many 

 pounds and plugs of tobacco — thus substituting a 

 vegetable for a metallic currency ; and as most men 

 coming to sea, whether they nse the weed or not, 

 provide themselves with a considerable quantity of 

 it, some of the old hands accumulated quite a stock ; 

 several of them numbering their acquisitions by the 

 hundred pounds. As they did not assign a motive 

 for hoarding it, I wondered at the propensity, but 

 was not enlio-htened until we made an Australian 

 j)ort, where, on account of the inferior article im- 

 ported, and the high duty, making the price per 

 pound treble of the best tobacco in the States, theirs, 



