BURIED TREASURE HAS ALREADY COST ALMOST TWICE ITS OWN VALUE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 30, 16 March 1948, Page 8

BURIED TREASURE HAS ALREADY COST ALMOST TWICE ITS OWN VALUE

Experts calculate that almost twice as much money has been spent in search for treasure as the treasure buried is worth, in all parts of the world. Many stories of buried treasure were tracked down ,"by Warner Bros, research department in their work on the film, "Treasure of Sierra Madre." The biggest treasure ever known "to have been lost is a 15 million dollar loot hidden in a Florida swamp. Old Navy and Treasury Department records confirm fact -that this swamp site was a rendezvous for pirates and free booters. The treasure is right in the centre of dangerous quicksands. One treasure party drained the entire swamp, diverted the river and dug around the quicksand and under, lost three men in the enterprise, spent a half million dollars and only recovered the trunk with dubloons worth 30,000 dollars. There are half a dozen commercial salvagers in the United States who do nothing but hunt for hidden treasure.

■ At Newport Beach at present six adventurers are planning to sail for Lima in search for a 60 million dollar loot spread over the Island of Cocos. In the treasure are two solid gold, life-size statures of the Virgin Mary, both priceless. _ The expedition has authentic, original charts and up-to-date scientific instruments. They will leave on their own 80-foot schooner.

Every year for the past 30 years an organised party has set out from Phennoix, Ariz, for one of the richest and bloodiest of reputed treasure troves—the Lost Dutchman mine. The "Dutchman," Jacob Walz, died in 1900 confessing a half dozem murders and leaving muddled directions to the mine. Many Arizonians get good clean exercise every year seeking the mine. Incidentally, the map, one of the few legitimate ones showing the mine, is done in blood.