Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1878-02-11
MONEY.
INSTRUMENTS OF EXCHANGE AND BARTER
FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES.


| Skins of wild animals, cured, consti-
tute one of the earliest forms of curren-
cy known, and, while employed in the
most ancient times, are not yet disused
in some portions of the world. Such a
medium seems appropriate among those
who subsist by the chase, as all prime
val peoples must in some degree, and it
is not. therefore, surprising to find that
IN the transactions of the Hudson Bay
Company with the Indians the unit of
value by which the price of other arti-
cles IS reckoned is the beaver skin.
| Ornaments of all kinds have in all
times constituted measures of value. In
Egypt, Ph@nicia, Etruria, and many
other ancient countries, as we'll as in
Ireland and Northumbria, rings have
been found which were designed to serve
the double purpose of ornament and
currency, and the same dual function
may be ascribed to the anklets, armlets,
and earrings which are worn through
out British India, Persia, Egypt and
Abyssinia. The Goths and Celts fash
Toned their rings of thick golden wire
wound in spirals, from which various
lengths could be broken to accommodate
the varying needs of traffic Gold chains
have been similarly employed. In many
countries golden beads are yet boarded,
worn, and circulated, fulfilling thus the
triple functions of money, inasmuch as
they constitute at once store of value,
a standard of value, and an instrument
of exchange. Amber was used as cur
rency by the savage races of the Baltic
in the period of the Roman dominion,
as it still is in some of the regions of
the East. The Egyptian scarabee carv-
ed on sard or nephrlte or other precious
stones, circulated freely throughout the
Mediterranean coasts and islands proba-
bly, before the first Phenician coin was
impressed, and engraved gems and pre-
cious stones were employed to transfer
wealth as well from one country to an
other as from hand to hand until COM
paratively recent period. In Africa,
ivory tusks passed to and fro in the pro-
cesses of trade, rudely defining the ratio
of value of other articles Among the
Tartars, bricks of tea, or cubes of that
herb pressed into solid form, pass from
hand to hand as freely as beaver skins
or the Saskatchewan. Among the NAL
agasans the only currency entirely equal
to the requirements of trade consists of
rough hardware, such as hoes, shovels
and the like Pieces of cotton cloth of
fixed length, called Guinea cloth, for
long period constituted the unit of
value in Senegal, Abyssinia, Mexico,
Peru, Siberia, and some of the islands
of the Pacific ocean. In Sumatra, cubes
of beeswax Of fixed weight; in Scot
land, handmade nails in Switzerland,
eggs; in Newfoundland, dried Goldfish /;
in Virginia, tobacco; in Yucatan, cocoa
nuts in the Greek islands and the Le-
want, olive-oil; in the regions of the
Upper Nile, salt, have all, at one time
or another, served the purposes of COM
mercial interchange. In agricultural
countries it is not strange that corn
should have early been adopted as 9
measure of value. The leases of the
great school foundations of Britain, Ok.
ford, Cambridge and Eton, with proba
bly, many others, were ''corn leases,
that is, specifying that the rental should
consist of SO many quarters of corn
Compared with gold, that product ha
steadily advanced in value for centuries
so that the schools have been the game
by the wisdom of their founders. Ii
Norway, corn is deposited in banks ant
lent and borrowed on time or call loans
: as money is with us. In Central Ameri
ca and Mexico maize was long employed
to serve the uses of currency.
> Lycurgus established an iron coinag
for Laced@mon, not only making tn
coins of such weight and bulk as to for
bid their export, but depriving them o
their metallic value by causing ther
while heated to be plunged into vinegar
, thereby destroying their malleability.
In New England, in the early colonia
days, leaden bullets were employed
indicate value, and that metal is sti
coined and circulated in Birmah. Pew
ter has often been coined, and in man
, countries, though not to the same exter
as tin. In fact, tin coins are not onl
of immense antiquity, but their impre'
, has been sanctioned by government al
: thority down to recent period. III
Phenician mariners freighted their ga
leys with the tin of Britain before Ca
thage was founded, and coins of Il
. same oiled the wheels of commerce
T the marts of Tyre and Sidon before Sc
omon built the temple at Jerusalem.
: England as late as>the period of Wi
: liam and Mary tin half pence and ia
: things were struck, though they fail
to become permanent part of the ci
culation. In numismatical collection
: series of tin coins stamped with the ei