Red Shell-Money of BSI

Letter to the Editor: Red Shell-Money of BSI

1 NOTICE that some of your corre spondents have been enquiring for data on Pacific shell money.

All over the Pacific, among Euro peans and natives, the most valued shell money was the red-shell strings made in the Island of Malaita, in the British Solomon Is.

Group. This may have been be cause of the scarcity of the shell from which the money was made so laboriously and painstakingly, by a few indigenes only, using primitive stone implements they fashioned for themselves.

The small shells were collected at low tide (fall under five feet) from the edges of shallows where thous ands of various kinds of little, de serted shells were left by the wash of receding waves, just as ridges of shells are left on beaches in the temperate seas.

The shell itself is of an opaque, brownish-pink shade. It retains this colour when cut and strung on hand-made strings fashioned from fibre. These are so many fathoms long, each section separated from the next by a series of rings made from less valued shells; sometimes small cowries were pierced, or pieces of tortoise-shell and nuts. All these, though of interest to collectors, were of no money value but were worked

into the strings at regular intervals, generally one fathom, for conveni ence in counting.

Several strings were generally worked into one long length. In pre-war days, a fathom was worth 10/-. But if the shell-money was of superior colour, fine and regular, the natives asked and generally obtained more for it.

I have seen natives collecting shells; also a single boy working in one of the walled villages of the Langa Langa Lagoon, which ex tends along the west coast of

Malaita, from Bina on the south Auki on the north. These villag; are unique in possessing the famoi walled islands that they have bu. of necessity, from the materials hand.

Even then (nearly 40 years ag» the demand for Red money was dl creasing—the art of selecting t wherewithal and producing 11: finished article was giving place the easily manipulated sovereig Diwara and other shell money us< in NG and elsewhere; and dogs’, fig

human and other teeth, are all quite unlike the unique, famous shell money of the Malaitan Langa Langa Lagoon, the makers of which were definitely boys from the islands.

Once a certain recruiting ship master attempted to make money by foisting faked Red-money on some Malaitans. To his chagrin, the fraud was discovered immediately.

He became a joke to his confreres and a suspect to the natives. He was one who failed to make good

in the Group.-

L. Poole.

The 7-man crew of a US Navy flying boat which was lost in the sea between Kwajalein and Johnson Island m mid-January, was located on rubber life rafts after an search by 4 snips ana 40 aircraft. . Both European and Indian cost of living index figures rose in Fiji for the last quarter of 1954. The European index rose by 7 points to 242 (100 in August, 1939) and the Indian index for Suva rose by 6

points and for the country by 12 points, to 275 and 310 respectively.

The rise was attributed mainly to increasing food costs.

Prompt action by three Euro pean women saved a young Fiji* Indian child’s life in early January.

The women were Acting Matron of the Colonial War Memorial Hos pital, Miss N, Sullivan, her sister, Mrs. W. E. Goodsir, and Mrs. R. I.

Cohen. The party was visiting Mosquito Island in the yacht Tamatea wh e n Miss Sullivan noticed the child drowning. She waded into the water and carried him to the beach where other mem bers of party helped resuscitate him.