peltry

Their Fur and Peltry come in quick Return: My Scales are honest, but so well contriv’d, That one small Slip will turn Three Pounds to One; Which they, poor silly Souls! ignorant of Weights And Rules of Balancing, do not perceive.

Linen at 3s. 6d. per yard, whisky at 2s. 6d. per gallon, and peltry as legal-tender.

They had several fox-skins with them, but no other kind of peltry, except their clothing, obtained from the seal or guanaco: and though many of them wore a penguin skin suspended from their girdle, some were without even that covering.

"Their only articles of traffic, besides such implements and weapons as they use, are seal and otter skins; and I should say that the quantity of peltry to be procured from them would be insignificant towards completing the cargo of a sealing vessel."

I cannot admit any of these derivations, though perhaps my own etymon may not be deemed less irrelevant, viz. pellis, the skin of a beast, whence our English terms pell, pelt, peltry, &c.