A Literary & Historical Atlas of America. J. G. Bartholomew

      PATAGONIA

      John Bartholomew & Co., Edin^r.

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      A BRIEF SURVEY

       OF THE

       COINAGE OF NORTH AND SOUTH

       AMERICA

       Table of Contents

      By G. C. BROOKE, B.A.

       Department of Coins and Medals, British Museum.

      The discovery of America by Columbus in 1492 was made under the flag of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain whose portraits appear on the remarkably fine gold coin (a Quadruple Escudo) figured on Plate I., No. 1; and it was therefore to the empire of Spain that the West Indian Islands on which he landed were annexed. The money circulated in these islands was Spanish, and after 1535 coins were struck specially for currency in these islands and other American colonies of Spain at the mint of Mexico which was established in that year (see Plate I., No. 6, and Plate VI., No. 2). This is the reason why countermarked Spanish "Pieces of Eight" or fractions of them were the regular currency in these islands during English and French occupation even so late as the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. English settlement in the West Indies began with Drake, Hawkins and Raleigh and continued through the first half of the seventeenth century; in many cases (e.g., St. Lucia, Dominique and Guadeloupe) their possession was long disputed with France and was not finally settled before the Napoleonic wars. All this time these countermarked