Chapter 24

The money canvas contained a veritable fortune in crowns and doubloons and pieces-of-eight and Spanish dollars and Portuguese half joes and a host of others that would require time and consideration to calculate. Most were gold, fewer were silver, and very little was copper, the reverse of the usual case. The bag also held paper money, some issued before the re-evaluation of 1780. There was new tenor and old tenor, 1781 Maryland red, and currency I did not even recognize. Then, of course, I retained the remaining gold pieces of my heritage. There was sufficient to wallow in velvet for eternity.

While fascinating and stimulating to the imagination, these were, of course, the least valuable items. The tools and the barrels of nails and other unrecovered wealth were what I hungered to reclaim from the wagon.