The Codfish Dollar. 
271 
shillings.” (Mass. Col. Rec. II: 29.) The next year a similar 
ordinance was passed in Connecticut, that good Ryall-of-eight 
and Rix-dollars should pass at 5 shillings. The prefix Rix is a 
corruption of the German word Reich which means empire, and 
coins stamped by imperial authority bore the word Reich. From 
the tendency of words to contraction, and because the syllable 
Rix meant nothing to ears unused to German, it was dropped in 
common parlance while the word dollar survived. 
The name dollar could not fail to be extended to the Spanish 
pound which is peso, or piece-of-eight, [Royals or Ryalls] and to 
supplant in English speech that latter circumculotion. The 
value of each was the same. Besides, when a single word ex¬ 
presses the meaning of a phrase, the shorter expression will 
displace the longer. Thus the French word portage ousted the 
English word carryingplace. 
Pieces-of-eight flowed into New England from southern Eu¬ 
rope and the West Indies, partly in return for fish and partly 
from the half piratical buccaneers who made booty on Spanish 
commerce. In early Plymouth Gov. Bradford describes one 
Capt. Cromwell who in 1646, having made rich prizes, scattered 
a great deal of silver among the pilgrims, and as was feared, a 
great deal more sin than silver. In 1740 Capt. Hull of New¬ 
port, made such a capture that the share of every man on his 
ship was proclaimed in the . Boston News Letter to amount to 
more than a thousand pieces-of-eight. In 1687 the Yankee 
skipper Phips, with his divers, brought up a million and a half 
of such pieces from the sunken wreck of a single Spanish gal¬ 
leon. But these spasmodic windfalls were trifles compared with 
the steady streams which gushed forth from the perennial fish¬ 
ery fountains. 
The codfish dollar thus became early the real unit of value, 
though the pound so continued in name till near the close of 
the eighteenth century. The Spanish divisions of the dollar,— 
as well as the dollar itself, predominated in American circula¬ 
tion, while English names were given to the pieces. Thus the 
Ryall, or royal was called a nine-pence and its half a four- 
pence-ha’ penny. These Spanish fractions formed most of the 
small silver—or change — current in the United States during 
