156 GYTRJEIDJE. 



were exchanged with the slave-traders for the Spanish doubloons 

 they received from the sale of slaves. The Hamburg ship- 

 captains dispatched this money home from Cape Town. The 

 cowry-trade continued to extend as the slave-trade nourished, 

 till Brazil took measures to prevent the introduction of African 

 slaves. Simultaneously with the extinction of the slave-trade 

 began the introduction of palm-oil, and a new trade, in which 

 that product took the place of the Spanish doubloons, that 

 grew as the use of palm-oil was extended. It flourished greatly 

 during the Crimean War, when the Black Sea tallow was excluded 

 from the markets. With it also flourished the trade in cowries, 

 which thus appears to be connected with so many historical 

 events that, considered from that point of view, it may be 

 regarded as in some sort a measure of historical development 

 a view which received another exemplification in 1852, when 

 England blockaded the coast of Dahomey, and the trade in 

 cowries was stopped. In 1845 the Sultan of Bornoo reformed 

 his currency, and introduced Spanish doubloons in place of the 

 cotton-cloth that had hitherto served as money, with cowries, at 

 the rate of four thousand to the dollar, for small change. A large 

 demand for cowries sprang up, and the trade in them was stim- 

 ulated to such an excess that the market was glutted, and it after- 

 ward languished for several years. The present demand is quite 

 lively. The cowry-shell is used as currency principally in the 

 countries near the Niger, except in Ashantee, where gold-dust is 

 the medium of exchange. North of Ashantee, gold-dust and the 

 gera or cola-nut (Sterculia acuminata) are used with cowries, a 

 load of sixty pounds of the nuts being considered equivalent in 

 value to about fifteen thousand cowries. The shells have been 

 used as a medium of exchange from a high antiquity. Marco 

 Polo found them circulating in Yunnan in the thirteenth century; 

 and they have been discovered in prehistoric graves in the Baltic 

 countries. Dr. Ruschenberger, U. S. N., says they are not used 

 as money in the Maldive Islands. 



On the authority of Mr. P. L. Simmonds, in " The Commer- 

 cial Products of the Sea," a young wife in Africa costs from 

 60,000 to 100,000 shells, while an ordinary one may be had for 

 20,000, valuing the shells at about 4000 to the dollar. It is also 

 stated that a house built by an English gentleman, in Cuttack, 

 was paid for in cowries, sixteen millions being used. 



