BURIED TREASURE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 November 1940, Page 6

BURIED TREASURE

SIR JOHN MOORE'S END. I ' We buried him darkly at dead of night, The sods with our bayonets turning; By the struggling moonbeam's misty light, And the lantern dimly burning. That was the end of Sir John Moore who had been fighting in Spain. He went the way of all the earth in 1809. and one of the last things he did was to give orders that a heavy military chest with money in it should be thrown into the River Bidassoa. One of the men appointed to throw the chest away was a shrewd Scotsman. He was John Bethune, and it seemed to him a sad thing to waste good money. So, instead of carrying out his chief's orders, he buried it —as darkly aS a few soldiers soon buried Sir John. It was near the river bank at a spot where five vineyard walls met that they left the treasure. Well, the war over, John Bethune went home, but every night he dreamed of that buried chest, and at last he got a free passage to Oporto, and began digging. For ail he was a soldier John was not very brave, and when some Spaniards came along and wanted to know what, he was up to, he ran away, leaving the treasure behind him. Back in Scotland again he took little notice of the Sutherlanders who laughed at him, marrying and settling down. But that chest haunted him. and long years after, when his wife was dead he set out once more for his fortune. But he was doomed to disappointment. for the fire walls had vanished, and the spot where the treasure should have been was covered by a row of houses with cool, green shutters. So back to Scotland he went a third time, and he never found the treasure, and he never knew that the houses he had seen had been built, by the Spaniards who had watched him at work with a spade, for they had found the money, and had turned it into property.