There were some prophecies, and a good deal of apprehension, that there would be difficulty experienced in obtaining sufficient gold to serve as money or as a basis for currency, especially when it was remembered that the influence of all that had recently happened had been to encourage the export of all the gold that was owned or produced on the island. But as the goldsmiths and the jewelers never experienced any difficulty during the war with the cannibals, or afterward, in obtaining all the gold they wanted, no matter how scarce and valuable it was as compared with currency, and could have had a hundred times more than they actually used, if their customers had been willing to pay for it; so the merchants, traders, and people at large on the island, as soon as they became satisfied that it was economical to use gold, and determined to have it, experienced no difficulty in obtaining an ample supply. One circumstance which, pending this result, tended to greatly relieve the popular apprehension on this score, was the reading in foreign newspapers that the people in certain comparatively poor countries--as Oregon, Arizona, Nevada, and Washington Territory--had no more difficulty in obtaining and retaining all the gold that they found it desirable to use for the purpose of money, than they had in obtaining and retaining all the wheelbarrows and steam-engines that they desired to use in conducting their business; and laughed when any body talked of depriving them of their gold money. The first step having been thus taken in the right direction, a sequence of other proper acts occurred as naturally and with the same favorable results as in the celebrated case of the old woman and the kid; in which it will be remembered that as soon as the water began to quench the fire, the fire began to burn the stick, the stick began to beat the dog, the dog began to bite the kid, and, as a consequence of this sequence and its concluding act, the old woman got safely home with the kid, though at a period of the evening much later than was desirable or proper. And so, by a succession of events, prosperity slowly but surely came back to the island.