only among the Haidas but all along the coast it takes the place of the beaver-skin currency of the interior of British Columbia and of the North West Territory. The blankets used in trade are distinguished by the points or marks on the edge, woven into their texture, the best being four-point, the smallest and poorest one-point. The acknowledged unit of trade is a single two and a half-point blanket, now worth a little over $1.50. Everything is referred to this unit, even a large four-point blanket is said to be worth so many blankets. There is also the “Copper,” “an article of purely conventional value and serving as money. This is a piece of native metal beaten out into a flat sheet and made to take a peculiar shape. These are not made by the Haidas—nor indeed is the native metal known to exist in the islands, but are imported as articles of great worth from the Chilcat country north of Sitka. Much attention is paid to the size and make of the copper, which should be of uniform but not too great thickness, and should give forth a good sound when struck with the hand. At the present time spurious coppers have come into circulation, and although these are easily detected by an expert, the value of the copper is somewhat reduced and is often more nominal than real. Formerly ten slaves were paid for a good copper as a usual price, now they are valued at from forty to eighty blankets”.8 It is obvious that such costly imported articles, though now used as occasional higher units of account—much as we employ fifty-pound notes—must have had some definite use, owing to which they were so highly prized. The attention paid to their tone would lead us to conjecture that they were employed as a kind of gong, and further on we shall find certain peoples of Further Asia paying a large price in buffaloes for gongs.
Before we quit finally the northern latitudes, it is worth our while to observe the method of currency employed by the Icelanders. As metals and other products of the land were scarce in their bleak home, the stockfish (dried cod) formed naturally their chief commodity, and hence it appears on the arms of Denmark as the emblem of Iceland. There is still extant a proclamation for the regulation of English trade with