HIDDEN TREASURE.

Evening Star, Issue 20052, 18 December 1928, Page 4

HIDDEN TREASURE.

Small hope is felt in the countries directly concerned of a war between Bolivia and Paraguay being averted. Both republics are mobilising,' and already more blood has been shed than that which gave the first incentive to martial passions. The war, if jb develops, may have some awkward consequences. The zeal of retired Chilean officers shows how easily neighbouring republics may bo drawn into it. Tho League of Nations may bo in an awkward position if it is required to discipline transgressors against its authority who come within the shadow of tho most sacred Monroe Doctrine. The most immediate, though perhaps tho least important, inconvenience of a state of war, however, threatens to befall the members of a peaceful expedition bent on one of those quests for real or imaginary hidden treasure which have always had such a compelling fascination for the human breast. Hidden in the interior of Bolivia there is said to lie treasure valued at upwards of ten million pounds. This is, or was, the belief of a party of British searchers into whose hands fell an old document purporting to state the location of tho hoard. Tho letter was supposedly written by the superior of a Jesuit monastery about tho time when the Jesuits were expelled from Bolivia. The story goes that, forced to leave the country in haste, and unable to take with them the wealth which they had amassed, they hid it in a great underground excavation. The'peons who laboured to dig the hiding place were poisoned, it is said, and their corpses left in tho groat grave they had dug. The expedition under Professor Edgar Sanders some time ago reported that they had found the spot, including part of » tunnel which leads into what it was hoped would prove to he the treasure chamber.

The expedition, however, has been having its difficulties, quite apart from the confusion of war. An early need which has confronted it, not unusual in such cases, has been more money for exploration. Professor Sanders is returning to England, by way of Paraguay, to raise the required capital, and if the present troubles should develop ho may not get back soon. If ho does it will bo ill working in a country distressed, by such disorders as those described by Hudson in ‘ The Purple Land.’ The expedition is convinced that it is on a true scent, though the value of the treasure, it is now suggested, not incredibly, may bo something less than the ton millions previously named. It has discovered 280 skeletons, presumed naturally to he those of the peons who were employed in carrying the riches to the hiding place. But the people were not few who massacred peons in the days of the conquistadores in South America. The search is bound up with tho tale of the rule of the Jesuits for two hundred years in Paraguay (not distinguished at that time from Southern Bolivia) from the sixteenth to eighteenth century, making one of the most idyllic episodes in human history, and, if Mr Cunninghamo Graham has nob been misled, quite the best thing which the Jesuits ever did. Mr Graham tells the story in one of the most delightful of his books, ‘ A Vanished Arcadia,’ which appears to be based on the best Spanish authorities. The Jesuits entered the country in the early days of conquest, and, penetrating far inland, established a semi-communis-tic rule over the Indians, ’ whom they kept from war among themselves and protected from the traders who would have exploited them and adventurers who would have made them slaves. Thirty towns, or what passed lor such, sprang up in their mission field. About them were the plantations and ranches which the Indians kept. Nobody worked too hard,, and religion ■ was never forgotten in that peaceful settlement. “To the task of agriculture the Jesuits marshalled their neophytes to the sound of music, and in procession to the fields, with a saint borne high aloft, tho community each day at sunrise took its way. Along the paths, at stated intervals, were shrines of saints, and before each of them they prayed, and between each shrine sang hymns. As the procession advanced it became gradually smaller as groups of Indians dropped off to work the various fields, and finally the priest and acolyte with the musicians returned alone. At midday, before eating, they all united and sang hymns, and then', after their meal and siesta, returned to work til! sun r down, when the procession again reformed, and the labourers, singing, returned to their abodes.”

The protection they extended to the Indians made it certain that the Jesuits would have enemies, They\had them from the first. The best weapon that could be used at any time against them, inciting to cupidity and hostility, lay in reports that they were immensely wealthy; they had found incalculably rich gold mines .which they worked secretly. No explorers who imperilled their lives in the quest—and they .were

man v—ever found tlioso secretmines. One of the earliest Spanish adventurers reached Peru from Paraguay, but brought no gold or riches back with him, though ho brought thousands of Indians as slaves. In the Chaco conn-* try, which is now tho scon© of conflict, the Jesuits made few converts. The region was irreclaimable, with its great swamps, and its Indians among the most wild! The Jesuits were expelled at last as a result of their enemies' machinations, and the country which they had beatified and made prosperous fell back into desolation. Its Indian population was soon decimated in the contact with more normal white civilisation. Many of the Jesuit communities were expelled forcibly, without warning. They took little more with them than tho clothes in which they stood, and no gold was ever found which they left behind them. The report of their mines Mr Graham holds to have been disproved a thousand times. Hut it was natural that tho mass of mankind should have been ‘‘unable to credit that anyone would live far away from the world, sur- 1 rounded but by ludians, for any other reason than to enrich themselves.” So there are people still. Mr Graham writes, who look for Jesuit mines in Paraguay. And there are others who seek for their treasure in Southern Bolivia, which is contiguous territory, though that search threatens to have difficulties at the present time.