Lewis carried a whole barrel of mercury

"...and Lewis carried a whole barrel of mercury...."

Why? As "shiny trading beads"?

A barrel of mercury? I had a couple ounces a chemisty-minded friend gave me in high school. After decades of worrying that the jar would break with kids around, sometime after the cats broke my first and last CFC bulb, I turned the jar over to the fire dept. (They probably just threw it into the trash.)