CURRENCY AND COINAGE 187 



of corn, 10 sets of brass pots, 20 sheep, 10 pigs, and 

 30 fowls.' 



The next point to observe is that currency in natural 

 articles has not by any means been confined to savages 

 or semi-civilized communities. In Iceland in 1420, stock- 

 fish or dried cod was the currency, and in the early 

 British colonies all through the seventeenth century, there 

 is much and most interesting evidence to show that the 

 currency covered a great variety of articles : tobacco, 

 corn, wampum, sugar, rum, cotton-wool, mahogany, 

 molasses, ginger, indigo, skins, and so on. In 1643, in 

 Massachusetts, wampum strings were made a legal 

 tender, and tobacco was rated under penalties at 35. per 

 Ib. in Virginia in 1618. So sugar, tobacco, and other 

 things were made into monetary standards in the West 

 Indies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 

 Dried cod-fish was a circulating medium in Newfound- 

 land till much later. Even as late as 1 708, tobacco, to 

 quote an old Report, was ' the Meat, Drink, and Cloath- 

 ing and Money ' of Maryland ; and of tobacco, as a 

 currency, there is a good story told about Virginia in 

 1620-21. In that year ' 150 young and uncorrupt' girls 

 were imported as wives for the colonists, and were rated 

 originally at loolb. of tobacco or ,15, but subsequently 

 at the increased rate of 150 Ib. of tobacco or 22 los. 

 And we are told ' that it would have done a man's heart 

 good to see the gallant young Virginians hastening to 

 the waterside when a vessel arrived from London, each 

 carrying a bundle of the best tobacco under his arm and 

 taking back with him a beautiful and virtuous young 

 wife.' 



In Barbadoes the colonists commenced with a currency 

 chiefly in cotton and tobacco, but also in indigo and 

 'fustic-wood.' About 1640 sugar became the currency 



