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Show ders. It seems the innocent Tap-landers Tap-landers are also a conservative outfit out-fit and they still stick to the old Stone age standards. One coin sent is about 200 years old, is 26 inches in diameter and weighs 120 pounds. It is reported this coin has the value of an 18-foot canoe, one-quarter of an acre of land, or about 10,000 coconuts. co-conuts. It is said, for instance, that when a Taplander transaction involves in-volves too great a sum to be moved conveniently the new owner simply chisels his mark on his money and leaves it in his neighbor's yard until un-til he can round up enough help to tote it home. Sometimes the money Is never moved, and there Is a record rec-ord of one coin remaining at the same place for more than a century. Most of the Tap money Is in the form of disks of quarried limestones. lime-stones. Some resemble millstones In shape, and they weigh anything up to five tons. There is no mint on the island. All the money comes in the rough from the Pelew islands, is-lands, and the Taplanders then shape it up and give it a value. Discovering Dis-covering limestone on Tap would be just like discovering gold anywhere olse. Baltimore Evening Sun. "STONE AGE" MONEY ON ISLAND OF YAP Coins That Are Somewhat Hard to Steal. Tap, you may remember, is a tiny, almost microscopic island that Is part of the Caroline group, lying between be-tween Guam and the Philippines. An insignificant spot of land as far as size goes, it caused quite a pother poth-er after the allies took it from Germany Ger-many after the war. It is valuable as a cable station and as a- relaying relay-ing point for radio, and a great many fists were shaken over it until un-til its status finally was settled. This was done In 1922 by a treaty signed by the United States and Japan, recognizing the Japanese mandate over the island, but securing secur-ing to the United States certain cable rights. Nothing much was heard about Tap again until about five years later, lat-er, when the immigration bureau announced that the inhabitants of the island were snubbing us. At the time when immigrants from everywhere every-where on the globe were trying to crash our gates, the haughty Tap-landers Tap-landers joined with the snooty folk of Muscat, Nauru, Ruanda and French Togoland and would have none of us. The Taplanders are now back In the news again under somewhat picturesque pic-turesque circumstances. The Chase National bank, of New Tork, maintains main-tains in its main office one of the largest collections of moneys of the world. The big-hearted Taplanders and their coins weren't represented, and so to overcome this defect the islanders got together and shipped the bank a few coins three specimens speci-mens of their money, which is called "fei." The money arrived a day or so ago practically in the form of bowl- |
