Use of Cowry-sliells for Currency, Amulets, etc. 187 



before their makers had any intercourse with white per- 

 sons. The presence of the cowries, therefore, is of special 

 interest. 



The shells were sent by the discoverer to Dr. W. H. 

 Dall, another of America's leading conchologists, and the 

 following extraordinary statement was received in reply : — 

 " I should incline to the belief that the cowries were 

 imported in or about the time of Columbus' voyages. 

 Bound, as they supposed, for the Indies, where the 

 cowry was formerly (like our wampum) a staple 

 article of barter, the exploring vessels would undoubt- 

 edly have carried cowries as well as the other articles 

 of trade we know they carried. It would not have 

 taken them long to find out that cowries did not pass 

 as currency with American natives, and reporting this 

 on their return to Spain later traders would not have 

 carried them for barter. The necklace or bracelet 

 you obtained may have passed from hand to hand as 

 a curiosity (as I have known such things to do) until 

 it reached a people who knew nothing of the whites 

 'till much later. In fact your cowries may have come 

 off one of Columbus' own vessels ! " 

 But an even more remarkable story is that given in 

 "Harper's Monthly Magazine" for September (1916, 

 p. 599), by Mr. H. Newell Wardle, of the Philadelphia 

 Academy of Natural Science, as follows : — 



"The great Genoese, starting in 1492 on his tirst 

 voyage to discover a new route to the kingdom of the 

 Great Khan, doubtless stocked his ships with a goodly 

 store of these ivory-white porcelain shells. He had 

 been in Guinea. He knew the requirements of the 

 Gold Coast trade .... Probably, though he fails to 

 mention it, cowries, strung as for the Guinea trade, 

 were part of his stock — an ill-venture, in competition 



