Produced by David Widger
MYTHS AND LEGENDS
OF
OUR OWN LAND
By
Charles M. Skinner
Vol. 9.
AS TO BURIED TREASURE
AND
STORIED WATERS, CLIFFS, AND MOUNTAINS
CONTENTS:
AS TO BURIED TREASURE
Kidd's Treasure
Other Buried Wealth
STORIED WATERS, CLIFFS, AND MOUNTAINS
Monsters and Sea-Serpents
Stone-Throwing Devils
Storied Springs
Lovers' Leaps
God on the Mountains
AS TO BURIED RICHES
KIDD'S TREASURE
Captain Kidd is the most ubiquitous gentleman in history. If his earnings
in the gentle craft of piracy were frugally husbanded, he has possibly
left some pots of money in holes in the ground between Key West and
Halifax. The belief that large deposits of gold were made at Gardiner's
Island, Dunderberg, Cro' Nest, New York City, Coney Island, Ipswich, the
marshes back of Boston, Cape Cod, Nantucket, Isles of Shoals, Money
Island, Ocean Beach, the Bahamas, the Florida Keys, and elsewhere has
caused reckless expenditure of actual wealth in recovering doubloons and
guineas that disappointed backers of these enterprises are beginning to
look upon--no, not to look upon, but to think about--as visionary. A hope
of getting something for nothing has been the impetus to these
industries, and interest in the subject is now and then revived by
reports of the discovery--usually by a farmer ploughing near the
shore--of an iron kettle with a handful of gold and silver coins in it,
the same having doubtless been buried for purposes of concealment during
the wars of 1776 and 1812.
Gardiner's Island, a famous rendezvous for pirates, is the only place
known to have been used as a bank of deposit, for in 1699 the Earl of
Bellomont recovered from it seven hundred and eighty-three ounces of
gold, six hundred and thirty-three ounces of silver, cloth of gold,
silks, satins, and jewels. In the old Gardiner mansion, on this island,
was formerly preserved a costly shawl given to Mrs. Gardiner by Captain
Kidd himself. This illustrious Kidd--or Kydd--was born in New York, began
his naval career as a chaser of pirates, became a robber himself, was
captured in Boston, where he was ruffling boldly about the streets, and
was hanged in London in 1701. In sea superstitions the apparition of his
ship is sometimes confused with that of the Flying Dutchman.
At Lion's Rock, near Lyme, Connecticut, a part of his treasure is under
guard of a demon that springs upon intruders unless they recite Scripture
while digging for the money.
Charles Island, near Milford, Connecticut, was dug into, one night, by a
company from that town that had learned of Kidd's visit to it--and what
could Kidd be doing ashore unless he was burying money? The lid of an
iron chest had been uncovered when the figure of a headless man came
bounding out of the air, and the work was discontinued right then. The
figure leaped into the pit that had been dug, and blue flames poured out
of it. When the diggers returned, their spades and picks were gone and
the ground was smooth.
Monhegan Island, off the Maine coast, contains a cave, opening to the
sea, where it was whispered that treasure had been stored in care of
spirits. Searchers found within it a heavy chest, which they were about
to lift when one of the party--contrary to orders--spoke. The spell was
broken, for the watchful spirits heard and snatched away the treasure.
Some years ago the cave was enlarged by blasting, in a hope of finding
that chest, for an old saying has been handed down among the people of
the island--from whom it came they have forgotten--that was to this
effect: "Dig six feet and you will find iron; dig six more and you will
find money."
On Damariscotta Island, near Kennebec, Maine, is a lake of salt water,
which, like dozens of shallow ones in this country, is locally reputed to
be bottomless. Yet Kidd was believed to have sunk some of his valuables
there, and to have guarded against the entrance of boats by means of a
chain hung from rock to rock at the narrow entrance, bolts on either side
showing the points of attachment, while ring bolts were thought to have
been driven for the purpose of tying buoys, thus marking the spots where
the chests went down. This island, too, has been held in fear as haunted
ground.
Appledore, in the Isles of Shoals, was another such a hiding-place, and
Kidd put one of his crew to death that he might haunt the place and
frighten searchers from their quest. For years no fisherman could be
induced to land there after nightfall, for did not an islander once
encounter "Old Bab" on his rounds, with a red ring around his neck, a
frock hanging about him, phosphorescence gleaming from his body, who
peered at the intruder with a white and dreadful face, and nearly scared
him to death?
A spot near the Piscataqua River was another hiding-place, and early in
this century the ground was dug over, two of the seekers plying pick and
spade, while another stood within the circle they had drawn about the
spot and loudly read the Bible. Presently their implements clicked on an
iron chest, but it slid sideway into the ground as they tried to uncover
it, and at last an interruption occurred that caused them to stop work so
long that when they went to look for it again it had entirely
disappeared. This diversion was the appearance of a monster horse that
flew toward them from a distance without a sound, but stopped short at
the circle where the process of banning fiends was still going on, and,
after grazing and walking around them for a time, it dissolved into air.
Kidd's plug is a part of the craggy steep known as Cro' Nest, on the
Hudson. It is a projecting knob, like a bung closing an orifice, which is
believed to conceal a cavern where the redoubtable captain placed a few
barrels of his wealth. Though it is two hundred feet up the cliff,
inaccessible either from above or below, and weighs many tons, still, as
pirates and devils have always been friendly, it may be that the corking
of the cave was accomplished with supernatural help, and that if blasts
or prayers ever shake the stone from its place a shower of doubloons and
diamonds may come rattling after it.
The shore for several hundred feet around Dighton Rock, Massachusetts,
has been examined, for it was once believed that the inscriptions on it
were cut by Kidd to mark the place of burial for part of his hoard.
The Rock Hill estate, Medford, Massachusetts, was plagued by a spectre
that some thought to be that of a New Hampshire farmer who was robbed and
murdered there, but others say it is the shade of Kidd, for iron treasure
chests were found in the cellar that behaved like that on the Piscataqua
River, sinking out of sight whenever they were touched by shovels.
Misery Islands, near Salem, Massachusetts, were dug over, and under
spiritual guidance, too, for other instalments of Mr. Kidd's
acquisitions, but without avail.
It takes no less than half a dozen ghosts to guard what is hidden in
Money Hill, on Shark River, New Jersey, so there must be a good deal of
it. Some of these guardians are in sailor togs, some in their mouldy
bones, some peaceable, some noisy with threats and screams and groans--a
"rum lot," as an ancient mariner remarked, who lives near their graves
and daytime hiding-places. Many heirlooms are owned by Jerseymen
hereabout that were received from Kidd's sailors in exchange for
apple-jack and provisions, and two sailor-looking men are alleged to have
taken a strong-box out of Money Hill some years ago, from which they
abstracted two bags of gold. After that event the hill was dug over with
great earnestness, but without other result to the prospectors than the
cultivation of their patience.
Sandy Hook, New Jersey, near "Kidd's tree," and the clay banks of the
Atlantic highlands back of that point, are suspected hiding-places; but
the cairn or knoll called Old Woman's Hill, at the highlands, is not
haunted by Kidd's men, as used to be said, but by the spirit of a
discontented squaw. This spirit the Indians themselves drove away with
stones.
At Oyster Point, Maryland, lived Paddy Dabney, who recognized Kidd from
an old portrait on meeting him one evening in 1836. He was going home
late from the tavern when a light in a pine thicket caused him to turn
from the road. In a clearing among the trees, pervaded by a pale shine
which seemed to emanate from its occupants, a strange company was playing
at bowls. A fierce-looking reprobate who was superintending the game
glanced up, and, seeing Paddy's pale face, gave such a leap in his
direction that the Irishman fled with a howl of terror and never stopped
till he reached his door, when, on turning about, he found that the
phantom of the pirate chief had vanished. The others, he conceived, were
devils, for many a sea rover had sold himself to Satan. Captain Teach, or
Blackbeard, proved as much to his crew by shutting himself in the hold of
his ship, where he was burning sulphur to destroy rats, and withstanding
suffocation for several hours; while one day a dark man appeared on board
who was not one of the crew at the sailing, and who had gone as
mysteriously as he came on the day before the ship was wrecked. It was
known that Kidd had buried his Bible in order to ingratiate the evil one.
A flat rock on the north shore of Liberty Island, in New York harbor, was
also thought to mark the place of this pervasive wealth of the pirates.
As late as 1830, Sergeant Gibbs, one of the garrison at the island, tried
to unearth it, with the aid of a fortune-teller and a recruit, but they
had no sooner reached a box about four feet in length than a being with
wings, horns, tail, and a breath, the latter palpable in blue flames,
burst from the coffer. Gibbs fell unconscious into the water and narrowly
escaped drowning, while his companions ran away, and the treasure may
still be there for aught we know.
Back in the days before the Revolution, a negro called Mud Sam, who lived
in a cabin at the Battery, New York City, was benighted at about the
place where One Hundredth Street now touches East River while waiting
there for the tide to take him up the Sound. He beguiled the time by a
nap, and, on waking, he started to leave his sleeping place under the
trees to regain his boat, when the gleam of a lantern and the sound of
voices coming up the bank caused him to shrink back into the shadow. At
first he thought that he might be dreaming, for Hell Gate was a place of
such repute that one might readily have bad dreams there, and the legends
of the spot passed quickly through his mind: the skeletons that lived in
the wreck on Hen and Chickens and looked out at passing ships with blue
lights in the eye-sockets of their skulls; the brown fellow, known as
"the pirate's spuke," that used to cruise up and down the wrathful
torrent, and was snuffed out of sight for some hours by old Peter
Stuyvesant with a silver bullet; a black-looking scoundrel with a split
lip, who used to brattle about the tavern at Corlaer's Hook, and who
tumbled into East River while trying to lug an iron chest aboard of a
suspicious craft that had stolen in to shore in a fog. This latter bogy
was often seen riding up Hell Gate a-straddle of that very chest,
snapping his fingers at the stars and roaring Bacchanalian odes, just as
skipper Onderdonk's boatswain, who had been buried at sea without
prayers, chased the ship for days, sitting on the waves, with his shroud
for a sail, and shoving hills of water after the vessel with the plash of
his hands.
These grewsome memories sent a quake through Mud Sam's heart, but when
the bushes cracked under the strangers' tread, he knew that they were of
flesh and bone, and, following them for a quarter-mile into the wood, he
saw them dig a hole, plant a strong-box there, and cover it. A
threatening remark from one of the company forced an exclamation from the
negro that drew a pistol-shot upon him, and he took to his heels. Such a
fright did he receive that he could not for several years be persuaded to
return, but when that persuasion came in the form of a promise of wealth
from Wolfert Webber, a cabbage-grower of the town, and promises of
protection from Dr. Knipperhausen, who was skilled in incantations, he
was not proof against it, and guided the seekers to the spot.
After the doctor had performed the proper ceremonies they fell to work,
but no sooner had their spades touched the lid of an iron-bound chest
than a sturdy rogue with a red flannel cap leaped out of the bushes. They
said afterward that he had the face of the brawler who was drowned at
Corlaer's Hook, but, in truth, they hardly looked at him in their flight;
nor, when the place was revisited, could any mark of digging be found,
nor any trace of treasure, so that part of Kidd's wealth may be at this
moment snugly stowed in the cellar of a tenement. Webber had engaged in
so many crazy enterprises of this nature that he had neglected cabbage
culture, and had grown so poor that the last disappointment nearly broke
his heart. He retired to his chamber and made his will, but on learning
that a new street had been run across his farm and that it would
presently be worth ten times as much for building-lots as it ever had
been for cabbages, he leaped out of bed, dressed himself, and prospered
for many a day after.
OTHER BURIED WEALTH
The wealth of the Astors hardly exceeds the treasure that is supposed to
be secreted here and there about the country, and thousands of dollars
have been expended in dredging rivers and shallow seas, and in blasting
caves and cellars. Certain promoters of these schemes have enjoyed
salaries as officers in the stock companies organized for their
furtherance, and they have seen the only tangible results from such
enterprises.
One summer evening, in the middle of the seventeenth century, a bark
dropped anchor at the mouth of Saugus River, Massachusetts, and four of
the crew rowed to the woods that skirt its banks and made a landing. The
vessel had disappeared on the following morning, but in the forge at the
settlement was found a paper stating that if a certain number of shackles
and handcuffs were made and secretly deposited at a specified place in
the forest, a sum of money equal to their value would be found in their
stead on the next day. The order was filled and the silver was found, as
promised, but, though a watch was set, nothing further was seen of men or
ship for several months.
The four men did return, however, and lived by themselves amid the woods
of Saugus, the gossips reporting that a beautiful woman had been seen in
their company--the mistress of the pirate chief, for, of course, the
mysterious quartette had followed the trade of robbery on the high seas.
Three of these men were captured, taken to England, and hanged, but the
fourth-Thomas Veale--escaped to a cavern in the wood, where, it was
reputed, great treasures were concealed, and there he lived until the
earthquake of 1658, when a rock fell from the roof of the cave, closing
the entrance and burying the guilty man in a tomb where, it is presumed,
he perished of thirst and hunger. Dungeon Rock, of Lynn, is the name that
the place has borne ever since.
In 1852 Hiram Marble announced that he had been visited by spirits, who
not only told him that the pirates' spoils were still in their olden
hiding-place, but pointed out the spot where the work of excavation
should begin. Aided by his son he tunnelled the solid granite for a
distance of one hundred and thirty-five feet, the passage being seven
feet high and seven wide. Whenever he was wearied the "mediums" that he
consulted would tell him to make cuttings to the right or left, and for
every fresh discouragement they found fresh work. For thirty years this
task was carried on, both father and son dying without gaining any
practical result, other than the discovery of an ancient scabbard in a
rift. The heiress of the house of Marble alone reaped benefit from their
labors, for-resuming on a petty scale the levies of the first dwellers in
the rock--she boldly placarded the entrance to the workings "Ye who enter
here leave twenty-five cents behind."
In several cases the chasms that have been caused by wear of water or
convulsions of nature (their opposite sides being matched) were believed
to have been hiding-places, but, in the old days in New England, it was
believed that all such fractures were caused by the earthquake at the
time of the crucifixion--a testimony of the power of God to shake
sinners.
The Heart of Greylock is the name given to the crater-like recess, a
thousand feet deep, in the tallest of the Berkshire peaks, but it was
formerly best known as Money Hole, and the stream that courses through it
as Money Brook, for a gang of counterfeiters worked in that recess, and
there some spurious coinage may still be concealed. The stream is also
known as Spectre Brook, for late wandering hunters and scouting soldiers,
seeing the forgers moving to and fro about their furnaces, took them for
ghosts.
Province Island, in Lake Memphremagog, Vermont, is believed to contain
some of the profits of an extensive smuggling enterprise that was carried
on near the lake for several years.
A little company of Spanish adventurers passed along the base of the
Green Mountains early in the last century, expecting to return after
having some dealings with the trading stations on the St. Lawrence; so
they deposited a part of their gold on Ludlow Mountain, Vermont, and
another pot of it on Camel's Hump. They agreed that none should return
without his companions, but they were detained in the north and
separated, some of them going home to Spain. Late in life the sole
survivor of the company went to Camel's Hump and tried to recall where
the treasure had been hidden, but in vain.
While flying from the people whose declaration of independence had
already been written in the blood of the king's troops at Concord, the
royal governor--Wentworth--was embarrassed by a wife and a
treasure-chest. He had left his mansion, at Smith's Pond, New Hampshire,
and was making toward Portsmouth, where he was to enjoy the protection of
the British fleet, but the country was up in arms, time was important,
and as his wearied horses could not go on without a lightening of the
burden, he was forced to leave behind either Lady Wentworth or his other
riches. As the lady properly objected to any risk of her own safety, the
chest was buried at an unknown spot in the forest, and for a century and
more the whereabouts of the Wentworth plate and money-bags have been a
matter of search and conjecture.
When the Hessian troops marched from Saratoga to Boston, to take ship
after Burgoyne's surrender, they were in wretched condition-war-worn,
ragged, and ill fed,--and having much with them in the form of plate and
jewels that had been spared by their conquerors, together with some of
the money sent from England for their hire, they were in constant fear of
attack from the farmers, who, though they had been beaten, continued to
regard them with an unfavorable eye. On reaching Dalton, Massachusetts,
the Hessians agreed among themselves to put their valuables into a
howitzer, which they buried in the woods, intending that some of their
number should come back at the close of the war and recover it. An Indian
had silently followed them for a long distance, to gather up any
unconsidered trifles that might be left in their bivouacs, and he marked
the route by blazes on the trees; but if he saw the burial of this novel
treasury it meant nothing to him, and the knowledge of the hiding-place
was lost. For years the populace kept watch of all strangers that came to
town, and shadowed them if they went to the woods, but without result. In
about the year 1800 the supposed hiding-place was examined closely and
excavations were made, but, as before, nothing rewarded the search.
A tree of unknown age--the Old Elm--stood on Boston Common until within a
few years. This veteran, torn and broken by many a gale and
lightning-stroke, was a gallows in the last century, and Goody Glover had
swung from it in witch-times. On tempestuous nights, when the boughs
creaked together, it was said that dark shapes might be seen writhing on
the branches and capering about the sward below in hellish glee. On a
gusty autumn evening in 1776 a muffled form presented itself,
unannounced, at the chamber of Mike Wild, and, after that notorious miser
had enough recovered from the fear created by the presence to understand
what it said to him, he realized that it was telling him of something
that in life it had buried at the foot of the Old Elm. After much
hesitancy Mike set forth with his ghostly guide, for he would have risked
his soul for money, but on arriving at his destination he was startled to
find himself alone. Nothing daunted, he set down his lantern and began to
dig. Though he turned up many a rood of soil and sounded with his spade
for bags and chests of gold, he found nothing. Strange noises
overhead--for the wind was high and the twigs seemed to snicker eerily as
they crossed each other-sent thrills along his back from time to time,
and he was about to return, half in anger, half in fear, when his spirit
visitor emerged from behind the tree and stood before him. The mien was
threatening, the nose had reddened and extended, the hair was rumpled,
and the brow was scowling. The frown of the gold monster grew more awful,
the stare of his eye in the starlight more unbearable, and he was
crouching and creeping as if for a spring. Mike could endure no more. He
fainted, and awakened in the morning in his own chamber, where, to a
neighbor who made an early call, he told--with embellishments--the story
of the encounter; but before he had come to the end of the narrative the
visitor burst into a roar of laughter and confessed that he had
personated the supernatural visitant, having wagered a dozen bottles of
wine with the landlord of the Boar's Head that he could get the better of
Mike Wild. For all this the old tree bore, for many years, an evil
reputation.
A Spanish galleon, the Saints Joseph and Helena, making from Havana to
Cadiz in 1753 was carried from her course by adverse winds and tossed
against a reef, near New London, Connecticut, receiving injuries that
compelled her to run into that port for repairs. To reach her broken ribs
more easily her freight was put on shore in charge of the collector of
the port, but when it was desired to ship the cargo again, behold! the
quarter part of it had disappeared, none could say how. New London got a
bad name from this robbery, and the governor, though besought by the
assembly to make good the shortage, failed to do so, and lost his place
at the next election. It was reputed that some of the treasure was buried
on the shore by the robbers. In 1827 a woman who was understood to have
the power of seership published a vision to a couple of young blades, who
had paid for it, to the effect that hidden under one of the grass-grown
wharves was a box of dollars. By the aid of a crystal pebble she received
this really valuable information, but the pebble was not clear enough to
reveal the exact place of the box. She could see, however, that the
dollars were packed edgewise. When New London was sound asleep the young
men stole out and by lantern-light began their work. They had dug to
water-level when they reached an iron chest, and they stooped to lift
it-but, to their amazement, the iron was too hot to handle! Now they
heard deep growls, and a giant dog peered at them from the pit-mouth; red
eyes flashed at them from the darkness; a wild-goose, with eyes of
blazing green, hovered and screamed above them. Though the witch had
promised them safety, nothing appeared to ward off the fantastic shapes
that began to crowd about them. Too terrified to work longer they sprang
out and made away, and when-taking courage from the sunshine--they
renewed the search, next day, the iron chest had vanished.
On Crown Point, Lake Champlain, is the ruin of a fort erected by Lord
Amherst above the site of a French work that had been thrown up in 1731
to guard a now vanished capital of fifteen hundred people. It was
declared that when the French evacuated the region they buried money and
bullion in a well, in the northwest corner of the bastion, ninety feet
deep, in the full expectancy of regaining it, and half a century ago this
belief had grown to such proportions that fifty men undertook to clear
the well, pushing their investigations into various parts of the
enclosure and over surrounding fields. They found quantities of lead and
iron and no gold.
Follingsby's Pond, in the Adirondacks, was named for a recluse, who, in
the early part of this century, occupied a lonely but strongly guarded
cabin there. It was believed afterward that he was an English army
officer, of noble birth, who had left his own country in disgust at
having discovered an attachment between his wife and one of his
fellow-officers. He died in a fever, and while raving in a delirium spoke
of a concealed chest. A trapper, who was his only attendant in his last
moments, dug over the ground floor of the hut and found a box containing
a jewelled sword, costly trinkets, and letters that bore out the
presumption of Follingsby's aristocratic origin. What became of these
valuables after their exhumation is not known, and the existence of more
has been suspected.
Coney Island is declared to have been used by a band of pirates as the
first national sand bank, and, as these rascals were caught and swung off
with short shrift, they do say that the plunder is still to be had--by
the man who finds it. But the hotel-keepers and three-card-monte men are
not waiting for that discovery to grow rich.
In Shandaken Valley, in the Catskills, it was affirmed that a party of
British officers buried money somewhere, when they were beset by the
farmers and hunters of that region, and never got it out of the earth
again.
On Tea Island, Lake George, the buried treasures of Lord Abercrombie have
remained successfully hidden until this day.
The oldest house at Fort Neck, Long Island, was known for years as the
haunted house, and the grave of its owner--Captain Jones--was called the
pirate's grave, for, in the last century, Jones was accused of piracy and
smuggling, and there have been those who suspected worse. A hope of
finding gold and silver about the premises has been yearly growing
fainter. Just before the death of Jones, which occurred here in an
orderly manner, a crow, so big that everybody believed it to be a demon,
flew in at the window and hovered over the bed of the dying man until he
had drawn his last breath, when, with a triumphant cry, it flew through
the west end of the house. The hole that it broke through the masonry
could never be stopped, for, no matter how often it was repaired, the
stone and cement fell out again, and the wind came through with such a
chill and such shriekings that the house had to be abandoned.
The owner of an estate on Lloyd's Neck, Long Island, had more wealth than
he thought it was safe or easy to transport when he found the colonies
rising against Britain in 1775, and flight was imperative, for he was
known by his neighbors to be a Tory. Massing his plate, coin, and other
movables into three barrels, he caused his three slaves to bury them in
pits that they had dug beneath his house. Then, as they were shovelling
back the earth, he shot them dead, all three, and buried them, one on
each barrel. His motive for the crime may have been a fear that the
slaves would aid the Americans in the approaching struggle, or that they
might return and dig up the wealth or reveal the hiding-place to the
enemies of the king. Then he made his escape to Nova Scotia, though he
might as well have stayed at home, for the British possessed themselves
of Long Island, and his house became a place of resort for red-coats and
loyalists. It was after the turn of the century when a boat put in, one
evening, at Cold Spring Bay, and next morning the inhabitants found
footprints leading to and from a spot where some children had discovered
a knotted rope projecting from the soil. Something had been removed, for
the mould of a large box was visible at the bottom of a pit. Acres of the
neighborhood were then dug over by treasure hunters, who found a box of
cob dollars and a number of casks. The contents of the latter, though
rich and old, were not solid, and when diffused through the systems of
several Long Islanders imparted to them a spirituous and patriotic
glow--for in thus destroying the secreted stores of a royalist were they
not asserting the triumph of democratic principles?
The clay bluffs at Pottery Beach, Brooklyn, were pierced with artificial
caves where lawless men found shelter in the unsettled first years of the
republic. A wreck lay rotting here for many years, and it was said to be
the skeleton of a ship that these fellows had beached by false beacons.
She had costly freight aboard, and on the morning after she went ashore
crew and freight had vanished. It was believed that much of the plunder
was buried in the clay near the water's edge. In the early colonial days,
Grand Island, in Niagara River, was the home of a Frenchman, Clairieux,
an exile or refugee who was attended by a negro servant. During one
summer a sloop visited the island frequently, laden on each trip with
chests that never were taken away in the sight of men, and that are now
supposed to be buried near the site of the Frenchman's cabin. Report had
it that these boxes were filled with money, but if well or ill procured
none could say, unless it were the Frenchman, and he had no remarks to
offer on the subject. In the fall, after these visits of the sloop,
Clairieux disappeared, and when some hunters landed on the island they
found that his cabin had been burned and that a large skeleton, evidently
that of the negro, was chained to the earth in the centre of the place
where the house had stood. The slave had been killed, it was surmised,
that his spirit might watch the hoard and drive away intruders; but the
Frenchman met his fate elsewhere, and his secret, like that of many
another miser, perished with him. In 1888, when a northeast gale had
blown back the water of the river, a farmer living on the island
discovered, just under the surface, a stone foundation built in circular
form, as if it had once supported a tower. In the mud within this circle
he found a number of French gold and silver coins, one of them minted in
1537. Close by, other coins of later date were found, and a systematic
examination of the whole channel has been proposed, as it was also said
that two French frigates, scuttled to keep them out of the hands of the
English, lie bedded in sand below the island, one of them with a naval
paymaster's chest on board.
On the shore of Oneida Lake is an Indian's grave, where a ball of light
is wont to swing and dance. A farmer named Belknap dreamed several times
of a buried treasure at this point, and he was told, in his vision, that
if he would dig there at midnight he could make it his own. He made the
attempt, and his pick struck a crock that gave a chink, as of gold. He
should, at that moment, have turned around three times, as his dream
directed, but he was so excited that he forgot to. A flash of lightning
rent the air and stretched him senseless on the grass. When he recovered
the crock was gone, the hole filled in, and ever since then the light has
hovered about the place. Some say that this is but the will-o'-the-wisp:
the soul of a bad fellow who is doomed to wander in desolate regions
because, after dying, Peter would not allow him to enter heaven, and the
devil would not let him go into the other place, lest he should make the
little devils unmanageable; but he is allowed to carry a light in his
wanderings.
In Indian Gap, near Wernersville, Pennsylvania, the Doane band of Tories
and terrorists hid a chest of gold, the proceeds of many robberies. It is
guarded by witches, and, although it has been seen, no one has been able
to lay hands on it. The seekers are always blinded by blue flame, and
frightened away by roaring noises. The Dutch farmers of the vicinity are
going to dig for it, all the same, for it is said that the watch of evil
spirits will be given over at midnight, but they do not know of what
date. They will be on hand at the spot revealed to them through the
vision of a "hex layer" (a vision that cost them fifty cents), until the
night arrives when there are no blue flames.
In the southern part of Chester County, Pennsylvania, is money, too, but
just where nobody knows. A lonely, crabbed man, who died there in a poor
hut after the Revolution, owned that he had served the British as a spy,
but said that he had spent none of the gold that he had taken from them.
He was either too sorry for his deeds, or too mean to do so. He had put
it in a crock and buried it, and, on his death-bed, where he made his
statement, he asked that it might be exhumed and spent for some good
purpose. He was about to tell where it was when the death-rattle choked
his words.
The Isle of the Yellow Sands, in Lake Superior, was supposed by Indians
to be made of the dust of gold, but it was protected by vultures that
beat back those who approached, or tore them to pieces if they insisted
on landing. An Indian girl who stole away from her camp to procure a
quantity of this treasure was pursued by her lover, who, frightened at
the risk she was about to run from the vultures, stopped her flight by
staving in the side of her canoe, so that she was compelled to take
refuge in his, and he rowed home with her before the birds had come to
the attack.
Old Francois Fontenoy, an Indian trader, buried a brass kettle full of
gold at Presque Isle, near Detroit, that is still in the earth.
On the banks of the Cumberland, in Tennessee, is a height where a
searcher for gold was seized by invisible defenders and hurled to the
bottom of the cliff, receiving a mortal hurt.
The Spaniards were said to have entombed three hundred thousand dollars
in gold near Natchez. A man to whom the secret had descended offered to
reveal it, but, as he was a prisoner, his offer was laughed at. Afterward
an empty vault was found where he said it would be. Somebody had
accidentally opened it and had removed the treasure.
Caverns have frequently been used as hiding-places for things of more or
less value--generally less. Saltpetre Cave, in Georgia, for instance, was
a factory and magazine for saltpetre, gunpowder, and other military
stores during the Civil War. The Northern soldiers wrecked the potash
works and broke away tons of rock, so as to make it dangerous to return.
Human bones have been found here, too, but they are thought to be those
of soldiers that entered the cave in pursuit of an Indian chief who had
defied the State in the '40's. He escaped through a hole in the roof,
doubled on his pursuers, fired a pile of dead leaves and wood at the
mouth, and suffocated the white men with the smoke.
Spaniards worked the mines in the Ozark Hills of Missouri two hundred
years ago. One of the mines containing lead and silver, eighteen miles
southwest of Galena, was worked by seven men, who could not agree as to a
division of the yield. One by one they were killed in quarrels until but
a single man was left, and he, in turn, was set upon by the resurrected
victims and choked to death by their cold fingers. In 1873 a Vermonter
named Johnson went there and said he would find what it was the Spaniards
had been hiding, in spite of the devil and his imps. He did work there
for one day, and was then found dead at the mouth of the old shaft with
marks of bony fingers on his throat.
The seven cities of Cibola, that Coronado and other Spanish adventurers
sought in the vast deserts of the Southwest, were pueblos. A treacherous
guide who had hoped to take Coronado into the waterless plain and lose
him, but who first lost his own head, had told him a tale of the Quivira,
a tribe that had much gold. So far from having gold these Indians did not
know the stuff, but the myth that they had hoarded quantities of it has
survived to this day and has caused waste of lives and money. Towns in
New Mexico that have lain in ruins since 1670, when the Apaches butchered
their people--towns that were well built and were lorded by solid old
churches and monasteries erected by the Spanish missionaries--these towns
have often been dug over, and the ruinous state of Abo, Curari, and
Tabira is due, in part, to their foolish tunnelling and blasting.
A Spanish bark, one day in 1841, put in for water off the spot where
Columbia City, Oregon, now stands. She had a rough crew on board, and it
had been necessary for her officers to watch the men closely from the
time the latter discovered that she was carrying a costly cargo. Hardly
had the anchorchains run out before the sailors fell upon the captain,
killed him, seized all of value that they could gather, and took it to
the shore. What happened after is not clear, but it is probable that in a
quarrel, arising over the demands of each man to have most of the
plunder, several of the claimants were slain. Indians were troublesome,
likewise, so that it was thought best to put most of the goods into the
ground, and this was done on the tract known as Hez Copier's farm. Hardly
was the task completed before the Indians appeared in large numbers and
set up their tepees, showing that they meant to remain. The mutineers
rowed back to the ship, and, after vainly waiting for several days for a
chance to go on shore again, they sailed away. Two years of wandering,
fighting, and carousal ensued before the remnant of the crew returned to
Oregon. The Indians were gone, and an earnest search was made for the
money--but in vain. It was as if the ground had never been disturbed. The
man who had supervised its burial was present until the mutineers went
back to their boats, when it was discovered that he was mysteriously
missing.
More than forty years after these events a meeting of Spiritualists was
held in Columbia City, and a "medium" announced that she had received a
revelation of the exact spot where the goods had been concealed. A
company went to the place, and, after a search of several days, found,
under a foot of soil, a quantity of broken stone. While throwing out
these fragments one of the party fell dead. The spirit of the defrauded
and murdered captain had claimed him, the medium explained. So great was
the fright caused by this accident that the search was again abandoned
until March, 1890, when another party resumed the digging, and after
taking out the remainder of the stone they came on a number of human
skeletons. During the examination of these relics--possibly the bones of
mutineers who had been killed in the fight on shore--a man fell into a
fit of raving madness, and again the search was abandoned, for it is now
said that an immutable curse rests on the treasure.
STORIED WATERS, CLIFFS AND MOUNTAINS
MONSTERS AND SEA-SERPENTS
It is hardly to be wondered at that two prominent scientists should have
declared on behalf of the sea-serpent, for that remarkable creature has
been reported at so many points, and by so many witnesses not addicted to
fish tales nor liquor, that there ought to be some reason for him. He has
been especially numerous off the New England coast. He was sighted off
Cape Ann in 1817, and several times off Nahant. Though alarming in
appearance--for he has a hundred feet of body, a shaggy head, and goggle
eyes--he is of lamb-like disposition, and has never justified the
attempts that have been made to kill or capture him. Rewards were at one
time offered to the seafaring men who might catch him, and revenue
cutters cruising about Massachusetts Bay were ordered to keep a lookout
for him and have a gun double shotted for action. One fisherman emptied
the contents of a ducking gun into the serpent's head, as he supposed,
but the creature playfully wriggled a few fathoms of its tail and made
off. John Josselyn, gentleman, reports that when he stirred about this
neighborhood in 1638 an enormous reptile was seen "quoiled up on a rock
at Cape Ann." He would have fired at him but for the earnest dissuasion
of his Indian guide, who declared that ill luck would come of the
attempt. The sea-serpent sometimes shows amphibious tendencies and
occasionally leaves the sea for fresh water. Two of him were seen in
Devil's Lake, Wisconsin, in 1892, by four men. They confess, however,
that they were fishing at the time. The snakes had fins and were a matter
of fifty feet long.
When one of these reptiles found the other in his vicinage he raised his
head six feet above water and fell upon him tooth and nail--if he had
nails. In their struggles these unpleasant neighbors made such waves that
the fishermen's boat was nearly upset.
Even the humble Wabash has its terror, for at Huntington, Indiana, three
truthful damsels of the town saw its waters churned by a tail that
splashed from side to side, while far ahead was the prow of the animal--a
leonine skull, with whiskers, and as large as the head of a boy of a
dozen years. As if realizing what kind of a report was going to be made
about him, the monster was overcome with bashfulness at the sight of the
maidens and sank from view.
In April, 1890, a water-snake was reported in one of the Twin Lakes, in
the Berkshire Hills, but the eye-witnesses of his sports let him off with
a length of twenty-five feet.
Sysladobosis Lake, in Maine, has a snake with a head like a dog's, but it
is hardly worth mentioning because it is only eight feet long-hardly
longer than the name of the lake. More enterprise is shown across the
border, for Skiff Lake, New Brunswick, has a similar snake thirty feet
long.
In Cotton Mather's time a double-headed snake was found at Newbury,
Massachusetts,--it had a head at each end,--and before it was killed it
showed its evil disposition by chasing and striking at the lad who first
met it.
A snake haunts Wolf Pond, Pennsylvania, that is an alleged relic of the
Silurian age. It was last seen in September, 1887, when it unrolled
thirty feet of itself before the eyes of an alarmed spectator--again a
fisherman. The beholder struck him with a pole, and in revenge the
serpent capsized his boat; but he forbore to eat his enemy, and, diving
to the bottom, disappeared. The creature had a black body, about six
inches thick, ringed with dingy-yellow bands, and a mottled-green head,
long and pointed, like a pike's.
Silver Lake, near Gainesville, New York, was in 1855 reported to be the
lair of a great serpent, and old settlers declare that he still comes to
the surface now and then.
A tradition among the poor whites of the South Jruns to the effect that
the sea-monster that swallowed Jonah--not a whale, because the throat of
that animal is hardly large enough to admit a herring--crossed the
Atlantic and brought up at the Carolinas. His passenger was supplied with
tobacco and beguiled the tedium of the voyage by smoking a pipe. The
monster, being unused to that sort of thing, suffered as all beginners in
nicotine poisoning do, and expelled the unhappy man with emphasis. On
being safely landed, Jonah attached himself to one of the tribes that
peopled the barrens, and left a white progeny which antedated Columbus's
arrival by several centuries. God pitied the helplessness of these
ignorant and uncourageous whites and led them to Looking-Glass Mountain,
North Carolina, where He caused corn and game to be created, and while
this race endured it lived in plenty.
Santa Barbara Island, off the California coast, was, for a long time, the
supposed head-quarters of swimming and flying monsters and sirens, and no
Mexican would pass in hearing of the yells and screams and strange songs
without crossing himself and begging the captain to give the rock a wide
berth. But the noise is all the noise of cats. A shipwrecked tabby
peopled the place many years ago, and her numerous progeny live there on
dead fish and on the eggs and chicks of sea-fowl.
Spirit Canon, a rocky gorge that extends for three miles along Big Sioux
River, Iowa, was hewn through the stone by a spirit that took the form of
a dragon. Such were its size and ferocity that the Indians avoided the
place, lest they should fall victims to its ire.
The Hurons believed in a monster serpent--Okniont--who wore a horn on his
head that could pierce trees, rocks, and hills. A piece of this horn was
an amulet of great value, for it insured good luck.
The Zunis tell of a plumed serpent that lives in the water of sacred
springs, and they dare not destroy the venomous creatures that infest the
plains of Arizona because, to them, the killing of a snake means a
reduction in their slender water-supply. The gods were not so kind to the
snakes as men were, for the agatized trees of Chalcedony Park, in
Arizona, are held to be arrows shot by the angry deities at the monsters
who vexed this region.
Indians living on the shore of Canandaigua Lake, New York, tamed a pretty
spotted snake, and fed and petted it until it took a deer at a meal. It
grew so large that it eventually encircled the camp and began to prey on
its keepers. Vainly they tried to kill the creature, until a small boy
took an arrow of red willow, anointed it with the blood of a young woman,
and shot it from a basswood bow at the creature's heart. It did not enter
at once; it merely stuck to the scales. But presently it began to bore
and twist its way into the serpent's body. The serpent rolled into the
lake and made it foam in its agony. It swallowed water and vomited it up
again, with men dead and alive, before it died.
The monster Amhuluk, whose home is a lake near Forked Mountain, Oregon,
had but one passion-to catch and drown all things; and when you look into
the lake you see that he has even drowned the sky in it, and has made the
trees stand upside down in the water. Wherever he set his feet the ground
would soften. As three children were digging roots at the edge of the
water he fell on them and impaled two of them on his horns, the eldest
only contriving to escape. When this boy reached home his body was full
of blotches, and the father suspected how it was, yet he went to the lake
at once. The bodies of the children came out of the mud at his feet to
meet him, but went down again and emerged later across the water. They
led him on in this way until he came to the place where they were
drowned. A fog now began to steam up from the water, but through it he
could see the little ones lifted on the monster's horns, and hear them
cry, "We have changed our bodies." Five times they came up and spoke to
him, and five times he raised a dismal cry and begged them to return, but
they could not. Next morning he saw them rise through the fog again, and,
building a camp, he stayed there and mourned for several days. For five
days they showed themselves, but after that they went down and he saw and
heard no more of them. Ambuluk had taken the children and they would live
with him for ever after.
Crater Lake, Oregon, was a haunt of water-devils who dragged into it and
drowned all who ventured near. Only within a few years could Indians be
persuaded to go to it as guides. Its discoverers saw in it the work of
the Great Spirit, but could not guess its meaning. All but one of these
Klamaths stole away after they had looked into its circular basin and
sheer walls. He fancied that if it was a home of gods they might have
some message for men, so camping on the brink of the lofty cliffs he
waited. In his sleep a vision came to him, and he heard voices, but could
neither make out appearances nor distinguish a word. Every night this
dream was repeated. He finally went down to the lake and bathed, and
instantly found his strength increased and saw that the people of his
dreams were the genii of the waters--whether good or bad he could not
guess. One day he caught a fish for food. A thousand water-devils came to
the surface, on the instant, and seized him. They carried him to a rock
on the north side of the lake, that stands two thousand feet above the
water, and from that they dashed him down, gathering the remains of his
shattered body below and devouring them. Since that taste they have been
eager for men's blood. The rock on the south side of the lake, called the
Phantom Ship, is believed by the Indians to be a destructive monster,
innocent as it looks in the daytime.
So with Rock Lake, in Washington. A hideous reptile sports about its
waters and gulps down everything that it finds in or on them. Only in
1853 a band of Indians, who had fled hither for security against the
soldiers, were overtaken by this creature, lashed to death, and eaten.