there.

We were also surprised at his wanting so much money, for he had taken a
hundred pounds in gold, which from some fancy, he had stowed in a small
silver jewel-box that he had given my mother not long before she died. He
had also taken a hundred pounds worth of gold nuggets, which he had
intended to sell in Erewhon so as to provide himself with money when he
got there.

I should explain that these nuggets would be worth in Erewhon fully ten
times as much as they would in Europe, owing to the great scarcity of
gold in that country. The Erewhonian coinage is entirely silver--which
is abundant, and worth much what it is in England--or copper, which is
also plentiful; but what we should call five pounds' worth of silver
money would not buy more than one of our half-sovereigns in gold.

He had put his nuggets into ten brown holland bags, and he had had secret
pockets made for the old Erewhonian dress which he had worn when he
escaped, so that he need never have more than one bag of nuggets
accessible at a time. He was not likely, therefore, to have been robbed.
His passage to the port above referred to had been paid before he
started, and it seemed impossible that a man of his very inexpensive
habits should have spent two hundred pounds in a single month--for the
nuggets would be immediately convertible in an English colony. There was
nothing, however, to be done but to cable out the money and wait my
father's arrival.

Returning for a moment to my father's old Erewhonian dress, I should say
that he had preserved it simply as a memento and without any idea that he
should again want it. It was not the court dress that had been provided