Evening star. [volume], May 05, 1907, Sunday star, Page 4, Image 32

About Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972

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was induced to appropriate money, and the paradise
was purchased.
Thither were transported several hundreds of
ex-slaves, who were expected to be merely the advance
guard of an army of Negroes who would soon
be self supporting and happy. Buoyed up by the
thought of being their own masters, and satisfied
that the climate would exactly suit them, the
Negroes themselves were delighted with the prospect.
Their awakening came very soon. Left with
altogether inadequate supply of provisions, face to
face with a new existence in which strange reptiles
affrighted and strange insects poisoned, lacking a
leader, and utterly incapable of individual initiative,
the poor people fell easy victims to disease. Many
died from malaria, and the survivors were half
starved and in a condition of extreme debility when at
last a ship was sent to bringthem back to this country.
wrr -rtii?\T -d^?.
Wixjun uwigt iwoo oanvu iiilv biiv v/iuiia uvao
with the idea of founding a colony and upbuilding
the native character, he sought no title
of sovereignty from native Sultan. Service in the
navy of the East India Company had made him
acquainted with the territory governed and ungoverned
in that part of the
globe; and so, when
from sailorman he had <
graduated to shipbuild- EflJ^
er and man of means, he IjSJy
made straight for a point VEs about
five hundred miles
southwest of Java, and J, >
calmly annexed the
There was not much El ^
to the Cocos Islands in B. 1 ' tmSk
those days, and there is Fa \\ vX \>|V^*E9
not a great deal to them ft
now, although the build- PBk. - ii A
ing of a cable station is C/S&k *
in oroeress. and more is
likely to be heard of
them in the near future
than in the past. When
Ross, having brought
his family from the
farm in Scotland, where
wife and children had He Taught Them the Shortci
lived while he made Cateehum.
QUEER
r*1HERE seem no people so low in the social
staic <10 iaj nibxxuub at igaoi ouuit ci^uiva*
lent of money. Even the pygmies of the Semlik*
Forest pass slabs of hippo meat, and receive in
exchange bows and arrows; and the bushmen of
Ce ,'tral Australia barter skins for spearheads.
Ihe wampum belts of our own Indians are too
Xctmiilcir LU tail 1U1 muic man padding luciitiuii. nicy
are made of an exceedingly hard shell known as
quahog. Hard as it is, however, the Indians carve
tiny coins of different shapes, while other shells are
bored as beads. A single string of white wampum
is valued at one dollar and a quarter for each fathom's
length. A purple string represents about two dollars
and a half.
Among the commonest of all savage currencies
is the shell, which is found all over Africa, as well
as in the coral isles of the Pacific and in parts of
Asia. In remote cannibal New Britain of the Pacific,
the shell money is called tambu. It is a tiny
rare shell dug out of the sand by the natives of
Nakani, on the West Coast. When supplies of this
irritating currency arrive in a village, every man
__ . . i- 3 J 1 1 1 X1 t_ .4.1 1 1__
squais uown ana punciies nines uiruugu tne uaiK.s
of the shells, that he may thread them on long strips
of cane. They are next rolled into coils that vary
in length from one hundred to five hundred fathoms,
and are carefully wrapped in banana leaves and hung
in guarded treasure houses against the rainy day.
Buying a House with Shells
THE cowry is the commonest form of small change
in Indian bazaars. Last year an intelligent
Hindu of Cuttack paid for his new bungalow entirely
in these little shells. The cost amounted in our money
to two thousand dollars; and as sixty-four shells
equaled one tiny copper pice (equal to three-fourths
of one cent), no less than sixteen million cowries
were paid to savage laborers and artisans.
In many parts of Africa and Asia long strings of
these shells adorn village gods and fetishes; and
baskets ot tnem snouia really ngure in every missionary
report as having been offered by natives toward
the support of the local jungle church near the Nile's
sources or in far Siam. In Dahomey, a fierce West
African region where human sacrifice was dreadfully
rampant, before the French came, shell money
; ^a. ? a. ^?<. r??: ? j: 11-. *1
xjiaya <AII mi^ui Lctiit paii. rciiuuitciny tiic savci^c
King goes forth in barbaric procession with all the
wealth of his treasury borne before him in hundreds
of baskets. The whole does not represent one
hundred dollars; but wild enthusiasm and excitement
follow when the generous potentate hurls a
few strings of the shells among his fierce followers.
In the Solomon Islands shell money is strung in
ropes six feet long and wound girdle like about the
housekeeper's waist. Their value appears to depend
on color and shape. The Fiji Islanders buy
his fortune in the Far East, took possession, the
population consisted of about two hundred Malays.
They were very ordinary natives, having abiding
faith in the principle that the evils of the day were
sufficient thereunto, and apparently incapable of
sustained effort, or of thrift and orderliness. The
only occupation that appeared to afford them any
satisfaction was that of wife beating.
Ross did not beat his wife, he did not idle, and
he did not squander. He was a Scot. Being Scotch,
he was bent on improving men and things. These .
people were shiftless heathens. It was not for
mortal man to interfere with the scheme of the
universe by remaking them into Scotchmen; but
at least they might be labored with and taught that
there were- such things as order and- the Shorter
Catechism.
The undertaking would have daunted most men,
but early reverses only served to make the Scot
more stubborn in his intention. Fortunately, his
T_ i. 1 1
wue was 01 great assistance, ana 11 was, pernaps,
due rather to her work among the women than
to Ross's labors with the men that the first fruits had
begun to show when the ruler of the Cocos Islands
was called to give an account of his stewardship. His
son, who ruled in his place, appears to have
been a dreamer of dreams. But if, under him,
I material prosperity was not conspicuous in I
rnlnnv +"hp 1nv#? r?f t"h#? tiativpfl for tfipir 1
v"~ f v"~ """ **"* * v"~"
sovereign grew abundantly. Thus, when in
the course of human events the second ruler
went to his own place, the way was prepared
for one whose energy was equal to tnat of his
grandfather, while his knowledge of local
conditions and of native character was immpacnrahlv
cnrv*rinr
Under the rule of this third Ross, the settlement
soon became what it is to-day?a
very near approach to a model kingdom.
There are only five hundred and fifty inhabitants
even now; but every man is a
conienieu wurKer, ana every woman a perfect
housewife. Only, in some manner that
shall never be known, the Malays have
acquired one Scotch habit that was not
taught to them when they learned the
Shorter Catechism. Here ana there through
the islands are illicit stills in which toddy
t from the cocoanut is brewed in defiance of
tne Government.
KINDS OF
By HOWARD KELSEY
their food with whale's teeth painted white and red
?these are worth twenty times as much as the
white teeth. One will see a Fijian millionaire
stalking nude beneath the leathery palm tutts with
his wealth carried about his neck; the brilliant red
and white of his coinage forming a startling contrast
with his glossy dark skin. And when he marries,
his humble bride will present her dowry of
whale's teeth to a connoisseur who will accept
nothing but the best.
T1 ~ ~ ? J- 1 ~ Al T 1i...
111C1C Clic JdUC dUZi IlCdUb uiuuey 111 tiic j^uyciiLy
Islands, with queer little coins made of tufts of fur
from the flying fox. And feather money is found
in the island of Santa Cruz, of the same group. It
is made of the red feathers from the wings of gorgeous
parrots extremely difficult to capture. The
nati vpc till.'#* flip V?v cmparincr ctir?lrc wifVi a
i*u vi > vu iuivv viiv i/ii v_*ij i_/ j uiiAvui iiA^ uiiivnu II 1 Vll ?-?
viscid lime. Only certain of the wing feathers are
accepted as genuine coin of the realm; and these
are made into rolls fifteen feet long, and then coiled
up and placed between two flat boards.
In the New Hebrides there are curious coins made
of ouaintlv shaoed rines of snow white ouartz. flat
tened by rubbing and scraping. In certain other
islets of Melanesia mat money made of grass woven
in intricate patterns passes current. In Abyssinia
bars of rock salt will buy ammunition for muzzle
loading guns; and among the Wanyoro tribes of
Uganda rough iron spear heads, known as majembe,
1 1__ 3 T a. ? 1 1 a. 1
are largely useu. it was iuuiiu uy a recent expiurer
that two majembe sufficed to support an army of six
hundred natives for a day.
Money and Weapon Combined
TN the Molua country of Central Africa the savages
A ingeniously combine money and weapon in the
shape of a cruciform ingot of copper ore twelve
inches long. In the Niger States the money is
enormously heavy rings of brass and ivory, worn as
armlets and anklets, and so adding to their use as
r?nin thp nflfipp nf aHnmmpnt Thpv nrp
precisely like the coinage of the ancient Egyptians,
or the weighty ring money, adjusted to certain
weights, which Caesar found when his legions invaded
Britain.
Bales of calico, brass and copper rods specially
cast for the purpose in Kurope, young slaves of both
sexes, and shining beads?all form part of Africa's
loose currency. But perhaps the queerest, and one
that has all but passed away, is the faded finery of
civilization. A decade ago ingenious men returned
from the interior to Chinde, Mombasa, Sierra Leone,
and Cairo with large fortunes in ivory, gold, gums,
and ostrich feathers, obtained by bartering dingy
"VTOT even the story of the mutiny on the British
1^1 ship Bounty and the extraordinary voyage in
an open boat of R1igh and his unfortunate companions
is so remarkable as the story of the rule of the last
of the mutineers, who was discovered twenty years
later in the person of Alexander Smith (better known
perhaps by his assumed name of John Adams), the
benevolent despot of Pitcairn Island.
Smith had not only taken active part in the
mutiny, but later, after settling, with Fletcher,
Christian, seven other mutineers, and eighteen
natives of Otaheite, on Pitcairn, had deliberately
murdered one of his white companions (the last
but one remaining), in order to avert possible .
danger from the natives, whom this man had insulted.
Perhaps by this very act he obtained the absolute
power in the little community which was his up to
the time of his death. But the remarkable discovery
made by those who found the colony grown to forty
persons in 1808 was that this unlearned seaman,
this rebel and murderer, had guided his people in
such exemplary fashion that old and young were
animated by high moral principles and were living
in accordance with Christian doctrines.
To the Captain of the
visiting ship, Smith ex
I ing assured that he
I should on no account
I be molested, it is imposs'b'e
to describe the
universal joy that these
poor people manifested
'I'U D A.?1 ?L. oti/1 f ho nrfaf i4n Ack f V*Oi?
u? cvu/u vi ?u? oiiu bitv giawkuuv buvj
Mutineers. expressed."
MONEY
uniforms full of gold braid and scarlet stripes,
ragged shirt waists of brilliant silks, admirals'
cocked hats, stage shoes of gold and silver fabrics,
and Christmas tree junk of glass balls, and airy
trifles of that kind.
Chinese mnnpv is traced haek three thousand
years before Christ. One Emperor objected to
copper coinage, gathered a whole issue together,
buried it deep into the earth, and threw in on top
the workmen employed in digging the pit. The pu
and tao currencies were struck in the form of scraps
of cloth or knives for barter, and were in existence
from about the seventh to the second century
before Christ. The commonest of Chinese money is
the cash, a round metal disk with a square hole in
the center; a thousand of these are worth barely
seventy-five cents. One's cook in China goes to
market with great strings of this heavy money
M r* V* ? ? 1 i*v i * n m nrt?
luuitu iicctv, aiiuuiucia, cinu waist, uut cvcu wjicn
weighted with as much as a strong man can carry,
very little of our money is represented. On the
Russo-Chinese borders green tea pressed into bricks
has been the money of the country for a thousand
years. s
The Orient's Great Medium
BUT crude bar silver is the great medium of exchange
in China, Burma, and Siam. In the village
street sits the money changer, who will hand out
so many strings of cash in exchange for a sycee bar
of any shape or size. The ingot known as nen may
weigh a pound: it also oasses current in Indo
China, stamped on one side with a Chinese inscription,
giving the weight, with the merchant's name
who weighed it, and its estimated value. Woe unto
that man if he has erred dishonestly or in ignorance!
Then there are hat money, shoe money, boat
money, snailshell money, and willow leaf money.
All these are derived from the actual form taken by
the silver after it leaves the crucible and mold. The
oddest of them is the snailshell money, which is
really a bubble of silver solidified into the shape of
a shell. Each piece bears marks of identification
showing the crucible in which it was melted. In
the same cateeorv one should out the bullet money
of Siam?crude globes of solid silver bearing tiny
stamps. The largest is an ounce in weight; but
there are specimens as fine as small shot. The
gamblers of Burma and Siam use a porcelain currency
bearing grotesque emblems, with an inscription
in Chinese stating how much this or that merchant
will give for them.
Perhaps the queerest money in the world, however,
is represented by the boy and girl slaves of
\k?riii
iuuuaiiuiicuaii ^viii^ct. viic ui uicac win uu^ inu
camels. It is a currency much favored, for it will
carry itself, and increases in value like the best real
estate.
1