September 2026 Friday’s e-links: A 19th Century Explorer

Every once in a while, (and sometimes each day), I listen to a great podcast, enjoy an article, or see a good video that I want to share with you. These are my e-links.

Last updated 9/11/26

Researching money for my next book, I recently read a great article about William H. Furness III. As someone who lacks the adventurer gene, I had a hard time grasping why a new young physician would want to observe warring tribes with unknown contagious maladies in far-off, uncharted places. Because of Furness’s visit to the Yap, he became an economic legend.

William Furness (1868-1920) was a 19th/early 20th century adventurer. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania Medical School in 1891 and then completing a residency, his next step was not medicine. Instead, for the first of his Eastern travels, he accompanied a patient to Japan. After that, hoping to collect artifacts from regions visited by no White men, he and several companions went to Borneo. Traveling by Dayak canoe, Furness and his friends appear to have collected what they came for, including (as they described) “True boxes of birds and animals, trunks, guns Etc. strew the house & pelts & skins & monkeys the lawn – but we have been comfortable all the same.” After returning to Philadelphia in 1896 with more than 200 specimens, they went back to Borneo and beyond.

The reason I found Furness relates to his visit to “The Island of Stone Money.” During 1903, he traveled to the island of Yap in the North Pacific. His description of the massive limestone discs that composed their wealth and parts of their payment system was repeated in countless monetary histories.

This was Furness. The description under the photo came from a Penn Museum article.: