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 Spanish pieces formed almost the only currency; on Plate I. are shown such pieces made current for Tortola (Fig. 2), St. Lucia (Fig. 3), Dominique (Fig. 4), and Guadeloupe (Figs. 5 and 6). The two last pieces of Guadeloupe are especially interesting as showing how a fraction was cut out of a "Piece of Eight" (_i.e._, 8 reals), and the remainder of the original coin also put into circulation; it was originally struck by Ferdinand VII. at the Mexican mint in the year 1811. In 1816 Guadeloupe became French and such pieces were put out of circulation in favour of regular issues of French colonial coins. The Bermuda Islands, discovered by Bermudez in 1515, were not inhabited till Sir G. Somers (from whom they were also called Somers islands) was wrecked there in 1609, and a colony was sent from Virginia a few years later; here were struck the first coins of any English colonies in America; shillings, sixpennies and threepennies were issued bearing on the obverse a hog and on the reverse a ship; a threepenny piece is figured on Plate I., Fig. 7; they are now commonly known, from the obverse type, as Hog-money; these coins were probably struck between 1616 and 1618, certainly before 1624 in which year John Smith published his _Historie of Virginia_, etc., in which he mentions their use during the government of Daniel Tucker; the type of the hog, says John Smith, is in memory of the abundance of hogs found at the first landing in the islands. At the end of the eighteenth century copper coins were issued for Barbadoes; a penny of 1788 is figured on Plate I., No. 8; the types are mercantile—a negro's head and a pine-apple; the slave trade was abolished in 1806, and a later halfpenny token bears the motto "Freedom without Slavery." [Illustration: PLATE I.]