122 OVER ON THE ISLAND

Then, Governor Smith had a happy thought!

The silver dollar was worth six shillings. If he cut a shilling’s worth out of the cen re, he decided, he would have two coins. The ring would pass for five shillings and the piece cut out for one. So the dollars were duly punched.

Entered the Scotsman . . .

He, Mr. Birnie, discovered that the punch had been made too large, and that the centre pieces were worth more than a shilling each! He carefully collected as many as he could get and sent them on a boat to England to be sold for old silver. But the boat he sent them on was never heard of again. And, until this very day, the Scotsman’s cut-out shillings lie somewhere beneath the waves of the turbulent Atlantic. Perhaps that gurgling noise I sometimes hear as I lie on the beach is only a group of waves chuckling as they relate to each other how once they ”did” a Scotsman.

The Island certainly had a variety of coins in its day. None of the pre-Confederation coins, however, except the “tree” cents, had government sanction. The others simply found their way into the colony and were passed off as money. These were, in reality, half cash, half trash. Probably the most attractive coin was the one with the full-masted ship on one side, and “Ships, Colonies, and Commerce” on the reverse.

“‘Speed the Plough,’ and ‘Success to the Fisheries' had a remarkable history, too, ” declared Jean thought- fully. “Some man dumped eight hundred pounds of them on the city of St. John’s, Newfoundland, in exchange for silver or gold.” The Newfoundland people were quite provoked. The press raised such a