possesses. Hence there was likely to be a fairly universal ratio in value between female slaves and oxen, over such a region as we have sketched above. The facility too in transporting human chattels from one place to another would be an important element in keeping the price almost the same over all parts of the area. It is a very ancient principle with the slave captor and slave dealer to sell their captives far away from their original home. Among our Anglo-Saxon forefathers the slave from beyond the sea was always worth more than a captive from close at hand9. The explanation of this fact was suggested by Dr Cunningham, and the proof of it was found by Mr Frazer in Further India; for there the slave brought from a great distance is always more valuable than one who comes only a short way from his native land, as the possibility of the former’s running away and succeeding in escaping is so much less than that of the latter. This too seems to be the true explanation of the fact that in Homer we regularly find persons sold into slavery beyond the sea. Achilles sold the son of Priam to Euneos the son of Jason of Lesbos10, the nurse Eurycleia had been brought from the mainland, Eumaeus the swineherd had been sold to Laertes by the Phoenicians who had captured him with his nurse in his distant home11. This constant tendency to sell in one country the captives taken from another would do much to equalize prices everywhere, and the price being paid in oxen the ratio in value between oxen and female as well as male slaves would tend to be constant.
We have now reviewed the ordinary kinds of wealth amongst primitive pastoral people, but we have touched but lightly as yet on the subject of the metals.
We saw above that the two earliest kinds of currency consisted either of some article of absolute necessity, such as the skins of animals in the colder climates, or of some form of personal ornament, which being both universally esteemed as well as durable and portable will be readily accepted by all members of the community. It is of pre-eminent