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.-f- 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 J 



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 



*Tylor : Anthropology, p. 281. 

 tRidgeway : op. cit., p. 35. 



JThis fact is on the authority of an undated second-hand clipping from the " London 

 Standard. 



