"Cowry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cowry (Cypraea moneta). Crawfurd states (Dict. Ind. Islands, p. 117) that in the Asiatic archipelago this shell is found only on the shores of the Sulu group, and that it "seems never to have been used for money among the Indian Islanders as it has ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... Treasury; and the seller handed over to him the keys and the buyer opened the shop and found the inner parlour furnished with carpets and cushions. Moreover, he found there a store-room full of sails and masts, cordage and seamen's chests, bags of beads and cowrie[FN106]- shells, stirrups, battle-axes, maces, knives, scissors and such matters, for the last owner of the shop had been a dealer in second-hand goods.[FN107]ook his seat in the shop and Ahmad al-Danaf said ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... for 40 was adopted because cowrie shells, which are used for counting, were strung by forties; and igba, 200, because a heap of 200 shells was five strings, and thus formed a convenient higher unit for reckoning. Proceeding in this curious manner,[106] they called 50 strings 1 afo or head; and to illustrate ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant
... taels Boko Lanchester Cup;" another from distant Siberia, emerging from the primeval forests of that wondrous land of the future: "Tenbobski Quitter Ebury Handicap." Bets are accepted in all denominations from Victory Bonds to the cowrie-shells ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various
... gathered laver—that most delectable vegetable-seaweed—at the base of the Woolacombe rocks; dug and scratched for the elusive cowrie shell in the sands of Barricane Beach; devoured Mrs. Parker's teas of bread and butter and cream, jam and cake, laid on snow-white cloth upon trestle table; and watched their flat-pebbled ducks and drakes skip more or less successfully across ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... considered the sacred symbol of the Mid[-e]wign, and may consist of any small white shell, though the one believed to be similar to the one mentioned in the above tradition resembles the cowrie, and the ceremonies of initiation as carried out in the Mid[-e]wiwin at this day are believed to be similar to those enacted by Minab[-o]zho and the Otter. It is admitted by all the Mid[-e] priests whom I have consulted that much of the information ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... the tragedy of the American multi-millionaires. They are doomed to carry about with them a huge load of gold which they cannot disperse. They are no wiser than the savages, who hide and hoard their little heaps of cowrie-shells. They might as well have filled their treasuries with flint-stones or scraps of iron. They muster their wealth merely to become its slave. They are rich not because they possess imagination, but because they ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... of. Cuiju (Kwei-chau), province. Cuinet, Vital, on Turkman villages, on Mosul Kurds. Cuirbouly. Cuju. Cuncun (Han-Chung) province. Cunningham, General A. Cups, flying. Curds and Curdistan. Currency, copper token, in India, salt; leather; Cowrie, see Cowries. Currency, paper, in China, attempt to institute in Persia; alluded to. Current, strong south along East Coast of Africa. Currents, Cape of, or Corrientes. Curtains, Persian. Curzola Island, Genoese victory at, Polo's galley at; map of. Curzon, Lord, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... vision of a British Crown Officer trying to explain to a New Guinea tribesman what he meant when he said that taxes go to the Crown. The tribesman would probably wonder why the Chief of the English Tribe kept cowrie shells under his hat. ...
— A World by the Tale • Gordon Randall Garrett
... delivered a lecture on the island and its remains. They all, he stated, belong to the second age of iron in Sweden, and consisted of implements of iron, ornaments of bronze, and animal bones; Kufic coins have been found, along with cowrie-shells, and silver bracelets. The number of animal bones met with is immense, more than fifty species being represented, and what is especially noteworthy, the marrow bones were all crushed or split, just ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880
... where the spirits lived. She hoped that the young man's ghost would follow her, for pity in his sufferings had fast increased to love. As the spirit did not come, she returned to the surface of the earth and went on a voyage of search in a boat that a god had lent to her,—a boat of cowrie shell, which in overland travel would shrink so that it could be carried in the hand; then, at the word, would swell to a stately barge of pearl with ivory masts and sails as white as the snow on the mountain. This vessel moved with the speed of the wind in any direction the ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner |
