FIG. 81.—Money of uncivilised peoples: 1, 8, pearls (Pelew Islands); 2, iron plates (Ubangi);
3, rings of copper (Central Africa); 4, 5, cowries; 6, string of cowries;
7, “wampum” (N. Am. Indians); 9, money pick-axe (Negroes of the Upper Nile).
Figs. 1, 4, 5, and 8 are two-thirds, the others one-eighth of actual size.
Let us give a glance at eatables employed as money: rice-grains by the ancient Coreans and the modern natives of the Philippines; grains of salt in Abyssinia and at Laos; “cakes of tea,” which serve as the monetary unit in Mongolia. Let us also make but a passing reference to the pieces of stuff of a fixed length, which have a current value in China, Thibet, Mongolia, Africa, etc., and come to the subject of shells. Several species are employed as money: the Dentalum entalis by the Indians of the north-west of America, the Venus mercenaria, transformed into beads (wampum) by the Indians of the Atlantic coast of the United States (Fig. [81], 7), etc. But of all shells, the cowry is the best known. Two species are specially utilised as money, Monetaria (cyprea) moneta, L. (Fig. [81], 4, 5, 6), and Monetaria annulus, L. The first-mentioned seems to be most commonly used in Asia, the second in Africa.[318] Both are known all over the Indian Ocean, but they are gathered in great quantities only at two points, the Maldive Islands (to the west of Ceylon) and the Sooloo Islands (between the Philippines and Borneo). On the Asiatic continent the use of them was widespread, especially in Siam and in Laos. Twenty years ago 100 to 150 of these shells were worth a halfpenny. In Bengal, in the middle of last century, 2,400 to 2,560 cowries were worth a rupee, 100 a penny.
The true zone in which the cowry circulates is, however, tropical Africa; the fact is explained by its rarity, for the shell not being known in the Atlantic, it is only by commercial relations that it could have been propagated from east to west across the continent, from Zanzibar to the Senegal, and these commercial relations must have existed for a long period, for Cadamosto and other Portuguese travellers of the fifteenth century mention the use of the cowry as money among the “Moors” of the Senegal. The rate of exchange of the cowry is much higher in Africa than in Asia, which shows that this shell is an imported object. It was probably by the Arabs that the cowry was introduced to the east coast of Africa. Later on the Europeans also got hold of this trade.[319]
The cowry is still current to-day along all the west coast of Africa as far as the Cuanza River in Angola; farther south, as far as Walfisch Bay, another kind of “shell-money” is found, chaplets formed of fragments of a great land shell, the Achatina monetaria, strung on cord; they are principally made in the interior of the country of Benguela, in the district of “Selles,” and are despatched along the whole coast, and as far as London. These chaplets, about eighteen inches long, were worth fifteen years ago from fivepence to one shilling and threepence.[320]
But it is to metals especially that we may trace the origin of true money. Iron or bronze plates of fixed size or weight served as money in Assyria, among the Mycenians, and the inhabitants of Great Britain at the time of Julius Cæsar. Metal plates of varying form are in general use in Africa as money, as for example the “loggos” of the Bongos and other negroes of the Upper Nile (Fig. [81], 9), the spear-heads of the Jurs, the iron plates of the peoples of the basin of the Ubangi (Fig. [81], 2), the X-shaped bronze objects made in Lunda, which are current all over the Congo. Thirty years ago, in Cambodia, iron money, in the form of thin rings, from five and a half to six inches long, and weighing about seven ounces, was used.
A general fact to be noted in regard to primitive money is that it may be transformed without much trouble into an object of use (lance-iron, shovel, hoe, arrow-head, sword). In China the first bronze money had the form of a knife, the handle of which terminated in a ring; in time the blade became shorter and shorter, and at last disappeared, leaving only the ring, which was transformed into that Chinese money, pierced with a square hole, called “sapec,” or “cash.” Brass or copper wire, of which pieces are cut up (Fig. [81], 3), represents money in Central Africa. Silver bars, pieces of which are cut according to need, are also current money in China, as they were in Russia in the fifteenth century, as well as skins.
The question of transport and means of communication is closely allied to that of commerce. There is little to say about trade-routes, which most frequently are tracks made by chance in savage countries, and sometimes horrible neck-breaking roads in half-civilised countries. The means of transport are very varied, and may furnish matter for an interesting monograph, as O. Mason has shown.[321] The simplest mode of transport is that on men’s backs, with or without the aid of special apparatus, like the ski and snow-shoes in cold countries (Figs. [115] and [116]). To be noted apart are the attachments for climbing trees, used from Spain to New Caledonia, passing through Africa and India (Fig. [82]). We come next to the utilisation of animals, the ass, horse, mule, camel, ox, zebra, dog, etc., which at first carried the loads on their backs, and were afterwards employed as draught animals.
