But the measure of the valiant Peter which produced the greatest agitation in the community, was his laying his hand upon the currency. He had old-fashioned notions in favor of gold and silver, which he considered the true standards of wealth and mediums of commerce; and one of his first edicts was, that all duties to government should be paid in those precious metals, and that seawant, or wampum, should no longer be a legal tender. Here was a blow at public prosperity! All those who speculated on the rise and fall of this fluctuating currency, found their calling at an end; those, too, who had hoarded Indian money by barrels-full, found their capital shrunk in amount; but, above all, the Yankee traders, who were accustomed to flood the market with newly coined oyster-shells, and to abstract Dutch merchandise in exchange, were loud-mouthed in decrying this “tampering with the currency.” It was clipping the wings of commerce; it was checking the development of public prosperity; trade would be at an end; goods would moulder on the shelves; grain would rot in the granaries; grass would grow in the market-place. In a word, no one who has not heard the outcries and howlings of a modern Tarshish, at any check upon “paper-money,” can have any idea of the clamor against Peter the Headstrong, for checking the circulation of oyster-shells. In fact, trade did shrink into narrower channels; but then the stream was deep as it was broad; the honest Dutchmen sold less goods; but then they got the worth of them, either in silver and gold, or in codfish, tin ware, apple-brandy, Weathersfield onions, wooden bowls, and other articles of Yankee barter. The ingenious people of the east, however, indemnified themselves another way for having to abandon the coinage of oyster-shells; for about this time we are told that wooden nutmegs made their first appearance in New Amsterdam, to the great annoyance of the Dutch housewives. NOTE. _From a manuscript record of the province; Lib. N. Y. His. Society._—We have been unable to render your inhabitants wiser and prevent their being further imposed upon than to declare absolutely and peremptorily that henceforward seawant shall be bullion,—not longer admissible in trade, without any value, as it is indeed. So that every one may be upon his guard to no longer barter away his wares and merchandises for these bubbles,—at least not to accept them at a higher rate, or in a larger quantity, than as they may want them in their trade with the savages.