Produced by Al Haines
[Frontispiece: H.M.S. _Lutine_ leaving Yarmouth Roads, Oct. 9, 1799, on
her last voyage. (_From the painting by Frank Mason, R.A., in the
Committee Room of Lloyd's, London._) _See Chapter XI._]
THE BOOK OF
BURIED TREASURE
BEING A TRUE HISTORY OF THE GOLD, JEWELS,
AND PLATE OF PIRATES, GALLEONS, ETC.,
WHICH ARE SOUGHT FOR TO THIS DAY
BY
RALPH D. PAINE
Author of "The Ships and Sailors of Old Salem," etc.
ILLUSTRATED
London
William Heinemann
1911
Copyright 1911
By METROPOLITAN MAGAZINE COMPANY
Copyright 1911
By STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1911
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I THE WORLD-WIDE HUNT FOR VANISHED RICHES
II CAPTAIN KIDD IN FACT AND FICTION
III CAPTAIN KIDD, HIS TREASURE
IV CAPTAIN KIDD, HIS TRIAL AND DEATH
V THE WONDROUS FORTUNE OF WILLIAM PHIPS
VI THE BOLD SEA ROGUE, JOHN QUELCH
VII THE ARMADA GALLEON OF TOBERMORY BAY
VIII THE LOST PLATE FLEET OF VIGO
IX THE PIRATES' HOARD OF TRINIDAD
X THE LURE OF COCOS ISLAND
XI THE MYSTERY OF THE LUTINE FRIGATE
XII THE TOILERS OF THE THETIS
XIII THE QUEST OF EL DORADO
XIV THE WIZARDRY OF THE DIVINING ROD
XV SUNDRY PIRATES AND THEIR BOOTY
XVI PRACTICAL HINTS FOR TREASURE SEEKERS
ILLUSTRATIONS
H. M. S. _Lutine_ leaving Yarmouth Roads, Oct. 9, 1799, on her last
voyage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
Treasure-seekers' Camp at Cape Vidal on African Coast
Divers searching wreck of Treasure-ship _Dorothea_, Cape Vidal, Africa
Captain Kidd burying his Bible
Carousing at Old Calabar River
The Idle Apprentice goes to sea
John Gardiner's sworn statement of the goods and treasure left with him
by Kidd
Governor Bellomont's endorsement of the official inventory of Kidd's
treasure found on Gardiner's Island
The official inventory of the Kidd treasure found on Gardiner's Island
A memorandum of Captain Kidd's treasure left on Gardiner's Island
Statement of Edward Davis, who sailed home with Kidd, concerning the
landing of the treasure and goods
The French pass or safe conduct paper found by Kidd in the ship _Quedah
Merchant_
Kidd hanging in chains
"The Pirates' Stairs" leading to the site of Execution Dock at Wapping
where Kidd was hanged
Sir William Phips, first royal governor of Massachusetts
Map of Hispaniola (Hayti and San Domingo) engraved in 1723, showing the
buccaneers at their trade of hunting wild cattle
Permit issued by Sir William Phips as royal governor in which he uses
the title "Vice-Admiral" which involved him in disastrous quarrels
The oldest existing print of Boston harbor as it appeared in the time
of Sir William Phips, showing the kind of ships in which he sailed to
find his treasure
An ancient map of Jamaica showing the haunts of the pirates and the
track of the treasure galleons
The town and bay of Tobermory, Island of Mull
Duart Castle, chief stronghold of the MacLeans
Ardnamurchan Castle, seat of the MacIans and the MacDonalds
Defeat of the Spanish Armada
Diving to find the treasure galleon in Tobermory Bay
The salvage steamer _Breamer_ equipped with suction dredge removing a
sandbank from the supposed location of the _Florencia_ galleon in 1909
Scabbards, flasks, cannon balls, and small objects recovered from the
sunken Armada galleon
Stone cannon balls and breech-block of a breech-loading gun fished up
from the wreck of the _Florencia_ galleon
Sir George Rooke, commanding the British fleet at the battle of Vigo Bay
_The Royal Sovereign_, one of Admiral Sir George Rooke's line-of-battle
ships, engaged at Vigo Bay
Framework of an "elevator" devised by Pino for raising the galleons in
Vigo Bay
An "elevator" with air bags inflated
Cannon of the treasure galleons recovered by Pino from the bottom of
Vigo Bay
Hydroscope invented by Pino for exploring the sea bottom and
successfully used in finding the galleons of Vigo Bay
Lima Cathedral
Treasure-seekers digging on Cocos Island
Christian Cruse, the hermit treasure-seeker of Cocos Island
Thetis Cove in calm weather, showing salvage operations
Thetis Cove during the storm which wrecked the salvage equipment
Sir Walter Raleigh
Methods of manipulating the diving rod to find buried treasure
Gibbs and Wansley burying the treasure
The Portuguese captain cutting away the bag of moidores
Interview between Lafitte, General Andrew Jackson, and Governor
Claiborne
The death of Black Beard
THE BOOK OF BURIED TREASURE
Of all the lives I ever say,
A Pirate's be for I.
Hap what hap may he's allus gay
An' drinks an' bungs his eye.
For his work he's never loth:
An' a-pleasurin' he'll go;
Tho' certain sure to be popt off,
Yo, ho, with the rum below!
In Bristowe I left Poll ashore,
Well stored wi' togs an' gold,
An' off I goes to sea for more,
A-piratin' so bold.
An' wounded in the arm I got,
An' then a pretty blow;
Comed home I find Poll's flowed away,
Yo, ho, with the rum below!
An' when my precious leg was lopt,
Just for a bit of fun,
I picks it up, on t'other hopt,
An' rammed it in a gun.
"What's that for?" cries out Salem Dick;
"What for, my jumpin' beau?
"Why, to give the lubbers one more kick!"
Yo, ho, with the rum below!
I 'llows this crazy hull o' mine
At sea has had its share:
Marooned three times an' wounded nine
An' blowed up in the air.
But ere to Execution Bay
The wind these bones do blow,
I'll drink an' fight what's left away,
Yo, ho, with the rum below!
--_An Old English Ballad_.
THE BOOK OF BURIED TREASURE
CHAPTER I
THE WORLD-WIDE HUNT FOR VANISHED RICHES
The language has no more boldly romantic words than _pirate_ and
_galleon_ and the dullest imagination is apt to be kindled by any
plausible dream of finding their lost treasures hidden on lonely beach
or tropic key, or sunk fathoms deep in salt water. In the preface of
that rare and exceedingly diverting volume, "The Pirates' Own Book,"
the unnamed author sums up the matter with so much gusto and with so
gorgeously appetizing a flavor that he is worth quoting to this extent:
"With the name of pirate is also associated ideas of rich plunder,
caskets of buried jewels, chests of gold ingots, bags of outlandish
coins, secreted in lonely, out of the way places, or buried about the
wild shores of rivers and unexplored sea coasts, near rocks and trees
bearing mysterious marks indicating where the treasure was hid. And as
it is his invariable practice to secrete and bury his booty, and from
the perilous life he leads, being often killed or captured, he can
never revisit the spot again, therefore immense sums remain buried in
those places and are irrevocably lost. Search is often made by persons
who labor in anticipation of throwing up with their spade and pickaxe,
gold bars, diamond crosses sparkling amongst the dirt, bags of golden
doubloons and chests wedged close with moidores, ducats and pearls; but
although great treasures lie hid in this way, it seldom happens that
any is recovered."[1]
In this tamed, prosaic age of ours, treasure-seeking might seem to be
the peculiar province of fiction, but the fact is that expeditions are
fitting out every little while, and mysterious schooners flitting from
many ports, lured by grimy, tattered charts presumed to show where the
hoards were hidden, or steering their courses by nothing more tangible
than legend and surmise. As the Kidd tradition survives along the
Atlantic coast, so on divers shores of other seas persist the same kind
of wild tales, the more convincing of which are strikingly alike in
that the lone survivor of the red-handed crew, having somehow escaped
the hanging, shooting, or drowning that he handsomely merited,
preserved a chart showing where the treasure had been hid. Unable to
return to the place, he gave the parchment to some friend or shipmate,
this dramatic transfer usually happening as a death-bed ceremony. The
recipient, after digging in vain and heartily damning the departed
pirate for his misleading landmarks and bearings, handed the chart down
to the next generation.
It will be readily perceived that this is the stock motive of almost
all buried treasure fiction, the trademark of a certain brand of
adventure story, but it is really more entertaining to know that such
charts and records exist and are made use of by the expeditions of the
present day. Opportunity knocks at the door. He who would gamble in
shares of such a speculation may find sun-burned, tarry gentlemen, from
Seattle to Singapore, and from Capetown to New Zealand, eager to
whisper curious information of charts and sailing directions, and to
make sail and away.
Some of them are still seeking booty lost on Cocos Island off the coast
of Costa Rica where a dozen expeditions have futilely sweated and dug;
others have cast anchor in harbors of Guam and the Carolines; while as
you run from Aden to Vladivostock, sailormen are never done with
spinning yarns of treasure buried by the pirates of the Indian Ocean
and the China Sea. Out from Callao the treasure hunters fare to
Clipperton Island, or the Gallapagos group where the buccaneers with
Dampier and Davis used to careen their ships, and from Valparaiso many
an expedition has found its way to Juan Fernandez and Magellan Straits.
The topsails of these salty argonauts have been sighted in recent years
off the Salvages to the southward of Madeira where two millions of
Spanish gold were buried in chests, and pick and shovel have been busy
on rocky Trinidad in the South Atlantic which conceals vast stores of
plate and jewels left there by pirates who looted the galleons of Lima.
Near Cape Vidal, on the coast of Zululand, lies the wreck of the
notorious sailing vessel _Dorothea_, in whose hold is treasure to the
amount of two million dollars in gold bars concealed beneath a flooring
of cement. It was believed for some time that the ill-fated _Dorothea_
was fleeing with the fortune of Oom Paul Kruger on board when she was
cast ashore. The evidence goes to show, however, that certain
officials of the Transvaal Government, before the Boer War, issued
permits to several lawless adventurers, allowing them to engage in
buying stolen gold from the mines. This illicit traffic flourished
largely, and so successful was this particular combination that a ship
was bought, the _Ernestine_, and after being overhauled and renamed the
_Dorothea_, she secretly shipped the treasure on board in Delagoa Bay.
It was only the other day that a party of restless young Americans
sailed in the old racing yacht _Mayflower_ bound out to seek the wreck
of a treasure galleon on the coast of Jamaica. Their vessel was
dismasted and abandoned at sea, and they had all the adventure they
yearned for. One of them, Roger Derby of Boston, of a family famed for
its deep-water mariners in the olden times, ingenuously confessed some
time later, and here you have the spirit of the true treasure-seeker:
"I am afraid that there is no information accessible in documentary or
printed form of the wreck that we investigated a year ago. Most of it
is hearsay, and when we went down there on a second trip after losing
the _Mayflower_, we found little to prove that a galleon had been lost,
barring some old cannon, flint rock ballast, and square iron bolts. We
found absolutely no gold."
======================================================================
[Illustration: Treasure-seekers' Camp at Cape Vidal on African coast.]
Divers searching wreck of Treasure ship Dorothea, Cape Vidal, Africa.
======================================================================
The coast of Madagascar, once haunted by free-booters who plundered the
rich East Indiamen, is still ransacked by treasure seekers, and
American soldiers in the Philippines indefatigably excavate the
landscape of Luzon in the hope of finding the hoard of Spanish gold
buried by the Chinese mandarin Chan Lu Suey in the eighteenth century.
Every island of the West Indies and port of the Spanish Main abounds in
legends of the mighty sea rogues whose hard fate it was to be laid by
the heels before they could squander the gold that had been won with
cutlass, boarding pike and carronade.
The spirit of true adventure lives in the soul of the treasure hunter.
The odds may be a thousand to one that he will unearth a solitary
doubloon, yet he is lured to undertake the most prodigious exertions by
the keen zest of the game itself. The English novelist, George R.
Sims, once expressed this state of mind very exactly. "Respectable
citizens, tired of the melancholy sameness of a drab existence, cannot
take to crape masks, dark lanterns, silent matches, and rope ladders,
but they can all be off to a pirate island and search for treasure and
return laden or empty without a stain upon their characters. I know a
fine old pirate who sings a good song and has treasure islands at his
fingers' ends. I think I can get together a band of adventurers,
middle-aged men of established reputation in whom the public would have
confidence, who would be only too glad to enjoy a year's romance."
Robert Louis Stevenson who dearly loved a pirate and wrote the finest
treasure story of them all around a proper chart of his own devising,
took Henry James to task for confessing that although he had been a
child he had never been on a quest for buried treasure. "Here is
indeed a willful paradox," exclaimed the author of "Treasure Island,"
"for if he has never been on a quest for buried treasure, it can be
demonstrated that he has never been a child. There never was a child
(unless Master James), but has hunted gold, and been a pirate, and a
military commander, and a bandit of the mountains; but has fought, and
suffered shipwreck and prison, and imbrued its little hands in gore,
and gallantly retrieved the lost battle, and triumphantly protected
innocence and beauty."
Mark Twain also indicated the singular isolation of Henry James by
expressing precisely the same opinion in his immortal chronicle of the
adventures of Tom Sawyer. "There comes a time in every rightly
constructed boy's life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and
dig for buried treasure." And what an entrancing career Tom had
planned for himself in an earlier chapter! "At the zenith of his fame,
how he would suddenly appear at the old village and stalk into church,
brown and weather-beaten, in his black velvet doublet and trunks, his
great jack-boots, his crimson sash, his belt bristling with
horse-pistols, his crime-rusted cutlass at his side, his slouch hat
with waving plumes, his black flag unfurled, with the skull and
cross-bones on it, and hear with swelling ecstasy the whisperings,
'It's Tom Sawyer the Pirate!--The Black Avenger of the Spanish Main.'"
When Tom and Huck Finn went treasure seeking they observed the
time-honored rules of the game, as the following dialogue will recall
to mind:
"Where'll we dig?" said Huck.
"Oh, most anywhere."
"Why, is it hid all around?"
"No, indeed it ain't. It's hid in mighty particular places, Huck,
sometimes on islands, sometimes in rotten chests under the limb of an
old dead tree, just where the shadow falls at midnight; but mostly
under the floor in ha'nted houses."
"Who hides it?"
"Why, robbers, of course. Who'd you reckon, Sunday-school
superintendents?"
"I don't know. If 'twas mine I wouldn't hide it; I'd spend it and have
a good time."
"So would I. But robbers don't do that way. They always hide it and
leave it there."
"Don't they come after it any more!"
"No, they think they will, but they generally forget the marks or else
they die. Anyway, it lays there a long time and gets rusty; and by and
by somebody finds an old yellow paper that tells how to find the
marks,--a paper that's got to be ciphered over about a week because
it's mostly signs and hy'roglyphics."
Hunting lost treasure is not work but a fascinating kind of play that
belongs to the world of make believe. It appeals to that strain of
boyishness which survives in the average man even though his pow be
frosted, his reputation starched and conservative. It is, after all,
an inherited taste handed down from the golden age of fairies. The
folk-lore of almost every race is rich in buried treasure stories. The
pirate with his stout sea chest hidden above high-water mark is
lineally descended from the enchanting characters who lived in the
shadow land of myth and fable. The hoard of Captain Kidd, although he
was turned off at Execution Dock only two hundred years ago, has become
as legendary as the dream of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Many a hard-headed farmer and fisherman of the New England coast
believes that it is rash business to go digging for Kidd's treasure
unless one carefully performs certain incantations designed to placate
the ghostly guardian who aforetime sailed with Kidd and was slain by
him after the hole was dug lest the secret might thus be revealed. And
it is of course well known that if a word is spoken after the pick has
clinked against the iron-bound chest or metal pot, the devil flies away
with the treasure, leaving behind him only panic and a strong smell of
brimstone.
Such curious superstitions as these, strongly surviving wherever pirate
gold is sought, have been the common property of buried-treasure
stories in all ages. The country-folk of Japan will tell you that if a
pot of money is found a rice cake must be left in place of every coin
taken away, and imitation money burned as an offering to any spirit
that may be offended by the removal of the hoard. The negroes of the
West Indies explain that the buried wealth of the buccaneers is seldom
found because the spirits that watch over it have a habit of whisking
the treasure away to parts unknown as soon as ever the hiding-place is
disturbed. Among the Bedouins is current the legend that immense
treasures were concealed by Solomon beneath the foundations of Palmyra
and that sapient monarch took the precaution of enlisting an army of
jinns to guard the gold forever more.
In parts of Bohemia the peasants are convinced that a blue light hovers
above the location of buried treasure, invisible to all mortal eyes
save those of the person destined to find it. In many corners of the
world there has long existed the belief in the occult efficacy of a
black cock or a black cat in the equipment of a treasure quest which is
also influenced by the particular phases of the moon. A letter written
from Bombay as long ago as 1707, contained a quaint account of an
incident inspired by this particular superstition.
"Upon a dream of a Negro girl of Mahim that there was a Mine of
Treasure, who being overheard relating it, Domo, Alvares, and some
others went to the place and sacrificed a Cock and dugg the ground but
found nothing. They go to Bundarra at Salsett, where disagreeing, the
Government there takes notice of the same, and one of them, an
inhabitant of Bombay, is sent to the Inquisition at Goa, which
proceedings will discourage the Inhabitants. Wherefore the General is
desired to issue a proclamation to release him, and if not restored in
twenty days, no Roman Catholick Worship to be allowed on the Island."
A more recent chronicler, writing in _The Ceylon Times_, had this to
say:
"It is the belief of all Orientals that hidden treasures are under the
guardianship of supernatural beings. The Cingalese divide the charge
between the demons and the cobra da capello (guardian of the king's
ankus in Kipling's story). Various charms are resorted to by those who
wish to gain the treasure because the demons require a sacrifice. The
blood of a human being is the most important, but so far as is known,
the Cappowas have hitherto confined themselves to the sacrifice of a
white cock, combining its blood with their own drawn from the hand or
foot."
No more fantastic than this are the legends of which the British Isles
yield a plentiful harvest. Thomas of Walsingham tells the tale of a
Saracen physician who betook himself to Earl Warren of the fourteenth
century to ask courteous permission that he might slay a dragon, or
"loathly worm" which had its den at Bromfield near Ludlow and had
wrought sad ravages on the Earl's lands. The Saracen overcame the
monster, whether by means of his medicine chest or his trusty steel the
narrator sayeth not, and then it was learned that a great hoard of gold
was hidden in its foul den. Some men of Herefordshire sallied forth by
night to search for the treasure, and were about to lay hands on it
when retainers of the Earl of Warwick captured them and took the booty
to their lord.
Blenkinsopp Castle is haunted by a very sorrowful White Lady. Her
husband, Bryan de Blenkinsopp, was uncommonly greedy of gold, which he
loved better than his wife, and she, being very jealous and angry, was
mad enough to hide from him a chest of treasure so heavy that twelve
strong men were needed to lift it. Later she was overtaken by remorse
because of this undutiful behavior and to this day her uneasy ghost
flits about the castle, supposedly seeking the spirit of Bryan de
Blenkinsopp in order that she may tell him what she did with his pelf.
When Corfe Castle in Dorsetshire was besieged by Cromwell's troops,
Lady Bankes conducted a heroic defense. Betrayed by one of her own
garrison, and despairing of holding out longer, she threw all the plate
and jewels into a very deep well in the castle yard, and pronounced a
curse against anyone who should try to find it ere she returned. She
then ordered the traitor to be hanged, and surrendered the place. The
treasure was never found, and perhaps later owners have been afraid of
the militant ghost of Lady Bankes.
From time immemorial, tradition had it that a great treasure was buried
near the Kibble in Lancashire. A saying had been handed down that
anyone standing on the hill at Walton-le-Dale and looking up the valley
toward the site of ancient Richester would gaze over the greatest
treasure that England had ever known. Digging was undertaken at
intervals during several centuries, until in 1841 laborers accidentally
excavated a mass of silver ornaments, armlets, neck-chains, amulets and
rings, weighing together about a thousand ounces, and more than seven
thousand silver coins, mostly of King Alfred's time, all enclosed in a
leaden case only three feet beneath the surface of the ground. Many of
these ornaments and coins are to be seen at the British Museum.
On a farm in the Scotch parish of Lesmahagow is a boulder beneath which
is what local tradition calls "a kettle full, a boat full, and a bull's
hide full of gold that is Katie Nevin's hoord." And for ages past 'tis
well known that a pot of gold has lain at the bottom of a pool at the
tail of a water-fall under Crawfurdland Bridge, three miles from
Kilmarnock. The last attempt to fish it up was made by one of the
lairds of the place who diverted the stream and emptied the pool, and
the implements of the workmen actually rang against the precious kettle
when a mysterious voice was heard to cry:
"Paw! Paw! Crawfurdland's tower's in a law."
The laird and his servants scampered home to find out whether the tower
had been "laid law," but the alarm was only a stratagem of the spirit
that did sentry duty over the treasure. When the party returned to the
pool, it was filled to the brim and the water was "running o'er the
linn," which was an uncanny thing to see, and the laird would have
nothing more to do with treasure seeking.
The people of Glenary in the Highlands long swore by the legend that
golden treasure was hidden in their valley and that it would not be
found until sought for by the son of a stranger. At length, while a
newly drained field was being plowed, a large rock was shattered by
blasting, and under it were found many solid gold bracelets of antique
pattern and cunningly ornamented. The old people knew that the
prophecy had come true, for the youth who held the plow was the son of
an Englishman, a rare being in those parts a few generations ago.
Everyone knows that Ireland is fairly peppered with "crocks o' goold"
which the peasantry would have dug up long before this, but the
treasure is invariably in the keeping of "the little black men" and
they raise the divil and all with the bold intruder, and lucky he is if
he is not snatched away, body, soul, and breeches. Many a fine lad has
left home just before midnight with a mattock under his arm, and maybe
there was a terrible clap of thunder and that was the last of him
except the empty hole and the mattock beside it which his friends found
next morning.
In France treasure seeking has been at times a popular madness. The
traditions of the country are singularly alluring, and perhaps the most
romantic of them is that of the "Great Treasure of Gourdon" which is
said to have existed since the reign of Clovis in the sixth century.
The chronicle of all the wealth buried in the cemetery of this convent
at Gourdon in the Department of the Lot has been preserved, including
detailed lists of gold and silver, rubies, emeralds and pearls. The
convent was sacked and plundered by the Normans, and the treasurer, or
custodian, who had buried all the valuables of the religious houses
under the sway of the same abbot, was murdered while trying to escape
to the feudal seignor of Gourdon with the crosier of the lord abbott.
"The head of the crosier was of solid gold," says an ancient
manuscript, "and the rubies with which it was studded of such wondrous
size that at one single blow the soldier who tore it from the monk's
grasp and used it as a weapon against him, beat in his brains as with a
sledge-hammer."
Not only through the Middle Ages was the search resumed from time to
time, but from the latter days of the reign of Louis XIV until the
Revolution, tradition relates that the cemetery of the convent was
ransacked at frequent intervals. At length, in 1842, the quest was
abandoned after antiquarians, geologists, and engineers had gravely
agreed that further excavation would be futile. The French treasure
seekers went elsewhere and then a peasant girl confused the savants by
discovering what was undeniably a part of the lost riches of Gourdon.
She was driving home the cows from a pasture of the abbey lands when a
shower caused her to take shelter in a hollow scooped out of a
sand-bank by laborers mending the road. Some of the earth caved in
upon her and while she was freeing herself, down rolled a salver, a
paten, and a flagon, all of pure gold, richly chased and studded with
emeralds and rubies. These articles were taken to Paris and advertised
for sale by auction, the Government bidding them in and placing them in
the museum of the Bibliotheque.
During the reign of Napoleon III there died a very famous treasure
seeker, one Ducasse, who believed that he was about to discover "the
master treasure" (_le maitre tresor_) said to be among the ruins of the
ancient Belgian Abbey of Orval. Ducasse was a builder by trade and had
gained a large fortune in government contracts every sou of which he
wasted in exploring at Orval. It was alleged that the treasure had
been buried by the monks and that the word NEMO carved on the tomb of
the last abbott held the key to the location of the hiding-place.
In Mexico one hears similar tales of vast riches buried by religious
orders when menaced by war or expulsion. One of these is to be found
in the south-western part of the state of Chihuahua where a great gorge
is cut by the Rio Verde. In this remote valley are the ruins of a
church built by the Jesuits, and when they were about to be driven from
their settlement they sealed up and destroyed all traces of a
fabulously rich mine in which was buried millions of bullion. Instead
of the more or less stereotyped ghosts familiar as sentinels over
buried treasure, these lost hoards of Mexico are haunted by a specter
even more disquieting than phantom pirates or "little black men." It
is "The Weeping Woman" who makes strong men cross themselves and shiver
in their serapes, and many have heard or seen her. A member of a party
seeking buried treasure in the heart of the Sierra Madre mountains
solemnly affirmed as follows:
"We were to measure, at night, a certain distance from a cliff which
was to be found by the relative positions of three tall trees. It was
on a bleak tableland nine thousand feet above the sea. The wind
chilled us to the marrow, although we were only a little to the north
of the Tropic of Cancer. We rode all night and waited for the dawn in
the darkest and coldest hours of those altitudes. By the light of
pitch pine torches we consulted a map and decided that we had found the
right place. We rode forward a little and brushed against three soft
warm things. Turning in our saddles, by the flare of our torches held
high above our heads we beheld three corpses swaying in the wind. A
wailing cry of a woman's voice came from close at hand, and we fled as
if pursued by a thousand demons. My comrades assured me that the
Weeping Woman had brushed past us in her eternal flight."
This is a singular narrative but it would not be playing fair to doubt
it. To be over-critical of buried treasure stories is to clip the
wings of romance and to condemn the spirit of adventure to a pedestrian
gait. All these tales are true, or men of sane and sober repute would
not go a-treasure hunting by land and sea, and so long as they have a
high-hearted, boyish faith in their mysterious charts and hazy
information, doubters make a poor show of themselves and stand
confessed as thin-blooded dullards who never were young. Scattered
legends of many climes have been mentioned at random to show that
treasure is everywhere enveloped in a glamour peculiarly its own. The
base iconoclast may perhaps demolish Santa Claus (which God forbid),
but industrious dreamers will be digging for the gold of Captain Kidd,
long after the last Christmas stocking shall have been pinned above the
fireplace.
There are no conscious liars among the tellers of treasure tales. The
spell is upon them. They believe their own yarns, and they prove their
faith by their back-breaking works with pick and shovel. Here, for
example, is a specimen, chosen at hazard, one from a thousand cut from
the same cloth. This is no modern Ananias speaking but a gray-bearded,
God-fearing clam-digger of Jewell's Island in Casco Bay on the coast of
Maine.
"I can't remember when the treasure hunters first began coming to this
island, but as long ago as my father's earliest memories they used to
dig for gold up and down the shore. That was in the days when they
were superstitious enough to spill lamb's blood along the ground where
they dug in order to keep away the devil and his imps. I can remember
fifty years ago when they brought a girl down here and mesmerized her
to see if she could not lead them to the hidden wealth.
"The biggest mystery, though, of all the queer things that have
happened here in the last hundred years was the arrival of the man from
St. John's when I was a youngster. He claimed to have the very chart
showing the exact spot where Kidd's gold was buried. He said he had
got it from an old negro in St. John's who was with Captain Kidd when
he was coasting the islands in this bay. He showed up here when old
Captain Chase that lived here then was off to sea in his vessel. So he
waited around a few days till the captain returned, for he wanted to
use a mariner's compass to locate the spot according to the directions
on the chart.
"When Captain Chase came ashore the two went off up the beach together,
and the man from St. John's was never seen again, neither hide nor hair
of him, and it is plumb certain that he wasn't set off in a boat from
Jewell's.
"The folks here found a great hole dug on the southeast shore which
looked as if a large chest had been lifted out of it. Of course
conclusions were drawn, but nobody got at the truth. Four years ago
someone found a skeleton in the woods, unburied, simply dropped into a
crevice in the rocks with a few stones thrown over it. No one knows
whose body it was, although some say,--but never mind about that. This
old Captain Jonathan Chase was said to have been a pirate, and his
house was full of underground passages and sliding panels and queer
contraptions, such as no honest, law-abiding man could have any use
for."
The worthy Benjamin Franklin was an admirable guide for young men, a
sound philosopher, and a sagacious statesman, but he cannot be credited
with romantic imagination. He would have been the last person in the
world to lead a buried treasure expedition or to find pleasure in the
company of the most eminent and secretive pirate that ever scuttled a
ship or made mysterious marks upon a well-thumbed chart plentifully
spattered with candle-grease and rum. He even took pains to discourage
the diverting industry of treasure seeking as it flourished among his
Quaker neighbors and discharged this formidable broadside in the course
of a series of essays known as "The Busy-Body Series":
"... There are among us great numbers of honest artificers and laboring
people, who, fed with a vain hope of suddenly growing rich, neglect
their business, almost to the ruining of themselves and families, and
voluntarily endure abundance of fatigue in a fruitless search after
imaginary hidden treasure. They wander through the woods and bushes by
day to discover the marks and signs; at midnight they repair to the
hopeful spots with spades and pickaxes; full of expectation, they labor
violently, trembling at the same time in every joint through fear of
certain malicious demons, who are said to haunt and guard such places.
"At length a mighty hole is dug, and perhaps several cart-loads of
earth thrown out; but, alas, no keg or iron pot is found. No seaman's
chest crammed with Spanish pistoles, or weighty pieces of eight! They
conclude that, through some mistake in the procedure, some rash word
spoken, or some rule of art neglected, the guardian spirit had power to
sink it deeper into the earth, and convey it out of their reach. Yet,
when a man is once infatuated, he is so far from being discouraged by
ill success that he is rather animated to double his industry, and will
try again and again in a hundred different places in hopes of meeting
at last with some lucky hit, that shall at once sufficiently reward him
for all his expenses of time and labor.
"This odd humor of digging for money, through a belief that much has
been hidden by pirates formerly frequenting the (Schuylkill) river, has
for several years been mighty prevalent among us; insomuch that you can
hardly walk half a mile out of the town on any side without observing
several pits dug with that design, and perhaps some lately opened. Men
otherwise of very good sense have been drawn into this practice through
an overweening desire of sudden wealth, and an easy credulity of what
they so earnestly wished might be true. There seems to be some
peculiar charm in the conceit of finding money and if the sands of
Schuylkill were so much mixed with small grains of gold that a man
might in a day's time with care and application get together to the
value of half a crown, I make no question but we should find several
people employed there that can with ease earn five shillings a day at
their proper trade.
"Many are the idle stories told of the private success of some people,
by which others are encouraged to proceed; and the astrologers, with
whom the country swarms at this time, are either in the belief of these
things themselves, or find their advantage in persuading others to
believe them; for they are often consulted about the critical times for
digging, the methods of laying the spirit, and the like whimseys, which
renders them very necessary to, and very much caressed by these poor,
deluded money hunters.
"There is certainly something very bewitching in the pursuit after
mines of gold and silver and other valuable metals, and many have been
ruined by it....
"Let honest Peter Buckram, who has long without success been a searcher
after hidden money, reflect on this, and be reclaimed from that
unaccountable folly. Let him consider that every stitch he takes when
he is on his shopboard, is picking up part of a grain of gold that will
in a few days' time amount to a pistole; and let Faber think the same
of every nail he drives, or every stroke with his plane. Such thoughts
may make them industrious, and, in consequence, in time they may be
wealthy.
"But how absurd it is to neglect a certain profit for such a ridiculous
whimsey; to spend whole days at the 'George' in company with an idle
pretender to astrology, contriving schemes to discover what was never
hidden, and forgetful how carelessly business is managed at home in
their absence; to leave their wives and a warm bed at midnight (no
matter if it rain, hail, snow, or blow a hurricane, provided that be
the critical hour), and fatigue themselves with the violent digging for
what they shall never find, and perhaps getting a cold that may cost
their lives, or at least disordering themselves so as to be fit for no
business beside for some days after. Surely this is nothing less than
the most egregious folly and madness.
"I shall conclude with the words of the discreet friend Agricola of
Chester County when he gave his son a good plantation. 'My son,' said
he, 'I give thee now a valuable parcel of land; I assure thee I have
found a considerable quantity of gold by digging there; thee mayest do
the same; but thee must carefully observe this, _Never to dig more than
plough-deep_."
For once the illustrious Franklin shot wide of the mark. These
treasure hunters of Philadelphia, who had seen with their own eyes more
than one notorious pirate, even Blackbeard himself, swagger along Front
Street or come roaring out of the Blue Anchor Tavern by Dock Creek,
were finding their reward in the coin of romance. Digging mighty holes
for a taskmaster would have been irksome, stupid business indeed, even
for five shillings a day. They got a fearsome kind of enjoyment in
"trembling violently through fear of certain malicious demons." And
honest Peter Buckram no doubt discovered that life was more zestful
when he was plying shovel and pickaxe, or whispering with an astrologer
in a corner of the "George" than during the flat hours of toil with
shears and goose. If the world had charted its course by Poor
Richard's Almanac, there would be a vast deal more thrift and sober
industry than exists, but no room for the spirit of adventure which
reckons not its returns in dollars and cents.
There are many kinds of lost treasure, by sea and by land. Some of
them, however, lacking the color of romance and the proper backgrounds
of motive and incident, have no stories worth telling. For instance,
there were almost five thousand wrecks on the Great Lakes during a
period of twenty years, and these lost vessels carried down millions of
treasure or property worth trying to recover. One steamer had five
hundred thousand dollars' worth of copper in her hold. Divers and
submarine craft and wrecking companies have made many attempts to
recover these vanished riches, and with considerable success, now and
then fishing up large amounts of gold coin and bullion. It goes
without saying that the average sixteen-year-old boy could extract not
one solitary thrill from a tale of lost treasure in the Great Lakes,
even though the value might be fairly fabulous. But let him hear that
a number of Spanish coins have been washed up by the waves on a beach
of Yucatan and the discovery has set the natives to searching for the
buried treasure of Jean Lafitte, the "Pirate of the Gulf," and our
youngster pricks up his ears.
Many noble merchantmen in modern times have foundered or crashed ashore
in various seas with large fortunes in their treasure rooms, and these
are sought by expeditions, but because these ships were not galleons
nor carried a freightage of doubloons and pieces of eight, most of them
must be listed in the catalogue of undistinguished sea tragedies. The
distinction is really obvious. The treasure story must have the
picaresque flavor or at least concern itself with bold deeds done by
strong men in days gone by. Like wine its bouquet is improved by age.
It is the fashion to consider lost treasure as the peculiar property of
pirates and galleons, and yet what has become of the incredibly vast
riches of all the vanished kings, despots, and soldiers who plundered
the races of men from the beginnings of history? Where is the loot of
ancient Home that was buried with Alaric! Where is the dazzling
treasure of Samarcand? Where is the wealth of Antioch, and where the
jewels which Solomon gave the Queen of Sheba? During thousands of
years of warfare the treasures of the Old World could be saved from the
conqueror only by hiding them underground, and in countless instances
the sword must have slain those who knew the secret. When Genghis Khan
swept across Russia with his hordes of savage Mongols towns and cities
were blotted out as by fire, and doubtless those of the slaughtered
population who had gold and precious stones buried them and there they
still await the treasure seeker. What was happening everywhere during
the ruthless ages of conquest and spoliation[2] is indicated by this
bit of narrative told by a native banker of India to W. Forbes
Mitchell, author of "Reminiscences of the Great Mutiny":
"You know how anxious the late Maharajah Scindia was to get back the
fortress of Gwalior, but very few knew the real cause prompting him.
That was a concealed horde of sixty _crores_ (sixty millions sterling)
of rupees in certain vaults within the fortress, over which British
sentinels had been walking for thirty years, never suspecting the
wealth hidden under their feet. Long before the British Government
restored the fortress to the Maharajah everyone who knew the entrance
to the vaults was dead except one man and he was extremely old.
Although he was in good health he might have died any day. If this had
happened, the treasure might have been lost to the owner forever and to
the world for ages, because there was only one method of entrance and
it was most cunningly concealed. On all sides, except for this series
of blind passages, the vaults were surrounded by solid rock.
"The Maharajah was in such a situation that he must either get back his
fortress or divulge the secret of the existence of the treasure to the
British Government, and risk losing it by confiscation. As soon as
possession of the fortress was restored to him, and even before the
British troops had left Gwalior territory, masons were brought from
Benares, after being sworn to secrecy in the Temple of the Holy Cow.
They were blindfolded and driven to the place where they were to labor.
There they were kept as prisoners until the hidden treasure had been
examined and verified when the hole was again sealed up and the workmen
were once more blindfolded and taken back to Benares in the custody of
an armed escort."
[1] "The Pirates' Own Book" was published at Portland, Maine, 1837, and
largely reprinted from Captain Charles Johnson's "General History of
the Pyrates of the New Providence," etc., first edition, London, 1724.
His second edition of two volumes, published in 1727, contained the
lives of Kidd and Blackbeard. "The Pirates' Own Book," while largely
indebted to Captain Johnson's work, contains a great deal of material
concerning other noted sea rogues who flourished later than 1727.
[2] "As to Clive, there was no limit to his acquisitions but his own
moderation. The treasury of Bengal was thrown open to him. There were
piled up, after the usage of Indian princes, immense masses of coin,
among which might not seldom be detected the florins and byzants with
which, before any European ship had turned the Cape of Good Hope, the
Venetians purchased the stuffs and spices of the East. Clive walked
between heaps of gold and silver, crowned with rubies and diamonds, and
was at liberty to help himself."--Macauley.