178 THE EVOLUTION OF 



excellent opportunity for a little profitable business/ 

 This was the civilized man's profit. Now let us look 

 at the bargain from the savages' point of view. We can 

 do so because it has been recorded also in another 

 Report, which tells us : 'In former times these tribes 

 made all the salt they required for their own consump- 

 tion from salt springs, and they say that to make enough 

 salt for the requirements of an ordinary family a man's 

 labour was required for three months. A man can now 

 collect sufficient india-rubber in one month to exchange 

 with Bengalee traders for more than enough salt to last 

 him and his family for a year. So that a man who 

 chooses to occupy himself three months in collecting 

 rubber will, by bartering the same for salt, have a large 

 surplus of that article, with which to trade with the 

 Southern Tribes, who, they say, are willing to give one 

 maund of rubber for a quarter maund of salt/ Here 

 is a clear instance of a trade by barter, which is of profit 

 to both sides, each from its own point of view, owing 

 to the differing conditions in which they respectively 

 lived and acted. 



You will, of course, understand that what we call 

 money has in the stage of trade by barter no value what- 

 ever as such. A specimen of it in such circumstances 

 is merely a commodity, which may have no value, or 

 have a value very different from that which it possesses 

 for us. This fact is of importance in the present inquiry, 

 as it shows that the idea of money is so much a later 

 development than the idea of barter, that in the stage 

 of barter it exists not at all. In proving this from 

 instances, I am able to illustrate further the working 

 of trade by barter as above explained. Of the Green- 

 landers already noticed it was said that ' there is no 

 money in the countrey, being so happy as not to know 



