W. C a r e w H a z l i t t Coinage of the European Continent

Descriptive Outline of the Coinages of Europe 527
The colonial section is, as might be expected, extensive,
multifarious, and important from the lengthened time during
which the Portuguese have held their possessions
The Colonies.
m Asiaj Africa, and America, and the diversity
of types employed by them in the course of centuries in
their local mints abroad, as well as in those at home, for this
branch of the service. The reign of Emmanuel, which ran
parallel with the development of navigation and discovery
under Vasco da Gama, inaugurated the system of providing
a currency, at first perhaps only illustrative of such a
momentous episode, but soon to grow into an independent
monetary arrangement, in which the colonies themselves
to have
took a leading part.
Emmanuel himself appears
struck no more than the gold espkera and the meia esphera,
unless we are at liberty to suppose that some of the tostoes
with Dominus or D. Gvine. were of local origin ;
but his successor,
Joao III., not only regulated in an ordinance of 1541
the rates at which the gold dobra and its fractions should
be received in Morocco, Suez, etc., but adopted the new St.
Vincent and St. Thomas types, which alike convey the idea
of religious propagandism. The vS. Vicente represents on
obverse the saint standing to right holding a palm-branch
in right and a ship in left hand, with an ordinary heraldic
reverse, while the S. Thome exhibits that saint standing to
left and the legend on reverse, India Tibi Cessit. Both are
srold, o and = 1000 reis ;
and there are the moieties of each.
'
The 5. Vicente was probably struck at Lisbon in 1555; but
the 5. Thome possesses the unique interest of having been
the earliest piece produced in the Portuguese Indies, and is
referred to 1548. The half exhibits on the reverse the
m.m. / surmounted by an annulet or besant.
The same reign produced,
it
appears, in 1555, a silver
patacao for, if not at, Goa, and a 3 -reis piece in copper about
that period with the legend Portugal Et Algarb. R. Affric.
and (in the field) lo. III. crowned ;
and there is a ceitil in the
lower metal, of which some examples bear the indication
that they were struck for the Acores or Terceira.
But it was not till toward the close of the protracted