THE BURIED TREASURE QUEST

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 188, 28 December 1912, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE BURIED TREASURE QUEST

USUALLY A WILD GOOSE CIfASE. ONE OR TWO KNOWN EXCEPTIONS. Ralph D. Paine, in "The Book of Buried Treasure," recalls to many of his readers the avaricious dreams of their early novel days.

"In this tame, prosaic age of ours," says Mr. Paine, "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 or surmise.

"From time immemorial tradition had it that a great treasure was buried near the Ribble, in Lancashire. A say ill" had been handed down that anyone standing on the hill at Walton-le-Dale and looking up the valley towards the s,ite.of ancient Rochester would gaze over the greatest treasure that England had ever known. Digging was undertaken during several centuries, until in 1841 a laborer accidentally excavated a mass of silver ornaments, armlets, neck chains, amulets and rings, weighing altogether 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 in the British Museum.

"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 vanquished kings, despots and soldiers who plundered the races of men from the beginning of history? Where is the loot of ancient Rome 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 the thousands of years of warfare the treasures of thfc 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 tftey still await the treasure seeker. What was happening everywhere duringthe ruthless ages of conquest and spoliation is l 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 tlic late Maharajah Scindia was to get back the fortress of Gwalior, but very few knew the real cause prompting him. That was a concealed hoard of sixty crores of rupees ( £ GO,000,000), in certain vaults within the fortress, over which British sentinels had been walking for thirty years, never suspecting the wealth hidden beneath their feet. As soon as possession 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. 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. "

MALIGXED CAPTAIN KIDD.

Of Captain Kidd we are told: "Doomed to an infamy undeserved, his name reddened with crimes he never committed, and made wildly romantic tales of' treasure which he did notb ury, Captain Kidd is fairly entitled to the sympathy of posterity and the apologies of nil the ballad makers and alleged historians who have obscured the facts in a .'.'loud of fable. Fate has played the strangest -tricks imaginable with the memory of tins seventeenth century seafarer, who never cut a throat-w made a victim walk the plank, who was 110 more than a third or fourth-rate pirate in an era when this interesting profession was in its heyday, and who was hanged at Execution Dock for the excessively unromantie crime of cracking the skull of gnmicr with a wooden bucket,." et Hit* Kidd legend inspired three treasure stories of surpassing merit— Stevenson's "Treasure Island," Poe's "flold Bug," and Washington Irving's ''Wolfert Webber"—as well as- countless legends of treasure. Xever, one is compelled to believe, was an unfortunate man saddled with a more lurid reputation than was poor William Kidd.

THE SUCCESS OF WIIXIAM PHIPS. After which it is a relief to turn to the blithesome fortunes of another William. the great Sir William Phips. "The flmv in the business of treasure, hunting, outside of fiction, is that the persona equipped with the shovels and picks and the ancient charts so seldom find the hidden gold. There is a genuine satisfaction, therefore, in sounding the name and fame of the man who not only went roving in search of lost treasure, but also found »aiid brought home more of it .than any other adventurer known to this kind of quest." "In a small merchantman called the James and Mary, Captain Phips set sail from England in l(!3(i, having another vessel to serve as a tender. , Arriving at Port tit; la Plata, he hewed out a large canoe from a Cottonwood tree, so large as to cam- eight or ten oars, savs Cotton .Mn I her, "for the making of which perigue (as they call it) they did, with the same industry that he did everything else, employ his own hand and adze, and, endure no little hardship, lying abroad in the woods many nights together. The canoe was used by a gang of,native divers quartered 011 board the tender. For some time they worked along the edge of a reef, called the boilers, guided by the story of that, ancient Spaniard, but found nothing lo reward their exertions. The crew was returning to report. to Captain Phips, when one of the men staring over the side info fhe wonderfully clear water, spied a 'sea feather.' or marine plant, of uncommon beaut v. growing from what appeared to be a rock. All Indian was sent down to fetch it as n souvenir of the bootless quest, that they might, however, carry home something with them. This diver presently bobbed up with the sea feather, and therewithal a surprising storv ihat "he perceived a number of great guns in the watery world, where he had found the feather'; the report of which great guns exceedingly astonished the whole company, and at once turned their despondencies for their ill success into assurances that they had now lit upon the true spot of ground which they had been looking For, and they were further confirmed in these assurances when, upon further diving, the Indian fetched up a sow, as they called it, or a lump of silver worth perhaps from two to three hundred pounds. Upon this they prudently buoyed the place, that..they might readily find it again; and they went back unto their captain. Then said he, Thanks

ibeen stored up, and then so prospered in this new fishery that in a little while ■ they had without the toss of any man's life, brought up thirty-two tons of silver, for it was now come to measuring silver ky ton*." hile these jolly treasure seeker# were hauling up the silver hoard hand over fist, one Adderley, a seaman of New Providence, in the Bra'hmas, was hired with his vessel to help in the gorgeous ( salvage operations. Alas! after Adderley had recovered six tons of bullion the sight of so much treasure was too much for him. He took his share to the Bermudas, and led such a gay life with it that he died after a year or two. Hardhearted William Phips was a man of another kind, and he drove his crew of divers and wreckers, the sailors keeping busy on deck at hammering from the silver 'bars a crust of limestone several inches thick. Besides that incredilile treasure of plate in various forms, thus fetched up from under seven or eight fathoms of water, there were vast riches of gold, and pearls, and jewels, which they also lit upon." So back to Boston came Phips, now "Sir William," after his visit to London with his treasure, and later to be the first Royal Governor, but not before he had proved his imettle against the French.

After dealing with the equally bold but wholly unscrupulous John Quetch, a pirate whose treasure is supposed to be concealed on the Isles of Shoals,, and who was properly hanged in Boston, we embark with Mr. Paine and make sail for Scotland.

THE FLORENCIA'S TREASURE. The Armada wrecks seem to have provided scant pickings, and the few cannon, the gold coins and silver candlesticks represent but an insignificant fraction of the large sums expended in suc«essive diving and dredging enterprises to recover their alleged cargoes. The Floreneia, or City of Florence, 1 was commanded by- Captain Pareira, a Portuguese, and had a large Portuguese crew on board. Pareira foolishly took part in local clan disputes, helping the MacLeans of Mulls against the Mac Donalds, when a prisoner on board is said to have blown up the vessel as she was warping out of the harbor. "I found an old plan and located the 'Spanish Wreck' from the plan, but only sent a man down once from a yacht. "There was little obtained during the last diving, cannon balls, a few pieces of plate, and small articles." The richest haul of any lies in the harbor of Vigo, where, in the year 1702, a vast treasure fleet, convoyed by French men-of-war, and laden With three years' tribute from the mines of Mexico and Peru, and totalling. 140,000,000 dollars, was sunk by gouty old Sir George Rook, who dealt a staggering blow at the supremacy of Spain. Equipped with the most up-to-date contrivances, a company headed by Pino, an Italian, is preparing hopefully to recover some part of this colossal hoard of gold and silver. THE LOOT OF LIMA.

Following the story of the unavailing search for buried treasure on the bleak lands of Trinidad, both localities presumed to be thickly sown with the loot of Lima upon the downfall of the Spanish rule, and a chapter each for the' wrecked warship Lutine, from which a few thousand sterling was salvaged from the sands of Zuyder Zee and the Thetis, from which by incredible exertions and ingenuity Captain Dickinson actually recovered all but one-sixteenth of its 800,000 dollar specie. The conflicting legends of El Dorado* are not overlooked, anil a learned treatise on the use of divining rods is followed by some entertaining biographical sketches of famous pirates of later days. For the guidance of those readers whose imaginations may have been tired by ".The Book of Buried Treasure," a linal chapter of "l'ractical Hints for Treasure Seekers" has been added, tabulating the whereabouts of some hundreds of millions of pieces and plants of gold, bars of silver, jewels and church relics. But such are reminded that:

''Faith, imagination and a vigorous physique comprise the essential equipment of a treasure seeker. Capital is desirable, but not absolutely necessary, for it would be hard indeed to find a neighborhood in which some legend or other of buried gold is not current. If one is not able to finance an expedition aboard a swift, black-hulled schooner, it is always possible to dig for the treasure of poor Captain Kidd, and it is really a matter of small importance that he left no treasure in his wake. The zest of the game is in seeking. A pick and a shovel arc to be obtained in the woodshed or can be purchased at the nearest hardware store for a modest outlay. A pirate's chart is to be highly esteemed, but if the genuine article cannot, he found, there are elderly seafaring.gentlemen in every port who will furnish one just as good and perjure themselves as *<•> Uie. iufomatiou thereof with all the cheerfulness in the world,"