Buried treasure

“ This is a singular narrative but it would not be playing fair to doubt it. To be over-critical of buried treasure stories is to clip the wings of romance and to condemn the spirit of adventure to a pedestrian gait. All these tales are true, or men of sane and sober repute would not go a-treasure hunting by land and sea, and so long as they have a high-hearted, boyish faith in their mysterious charts and hazy information, doubters make a poor show of themselves and stand confessed as thin-blooded dullards who never were young. ”

“ This adventure of yours after buried treasure has not seriously been for the doubloons and pieces of eight, the million dollars, and the million and a half dollars themselves, but for the fun of going after them, sailing the unknown seas, coral islands, and all that sort of blessed moonshine. Well, Calypso and I are just like that, and I am going to tell you something exciting—we too have our buried treasure. It is nothing like so magnificent in amount as yours, or your Henry P. Tobias's—and where it is at this particular moment I know as little as yourself. ”

“ There is something fascinating to the average youth in the very idea of buried treasure. A vision arises before his eyes of swarthy Portuguese and Spanish rascals, with black beards and gleaming eyes—sinister-looking fellows who once on a time haunted the Spanish Main, sneaking out from some hidden creek in their long, low schooner, of picaroonish rake and sheer, to attack an unsuspecting trading craft. ”

“ The quest for buried treasure is one which right [p. 255] through the ages has exercised an irresistible spell over humanity. Confronted with a spot where buried treasure may lurk, men do not stand upon the order of their digging; they go at it with both hands. No solicitude for his employer’s geraniums came to hamper Rupert Baxter’s researches. To grasp the first flower-pot and tilt out its contents was with him the work of a moment. ”

“ At times, however, this spook prefers to remain invisible, and then it is a little worse, for it showers stones and sods on the pedestrian until his legs have carried him well beyond the phantom's jurisdiction.
The legends of buried treasure, instanced in another place, frequently include assaults by the ghosts of pirates and misers on the daring ones who try to resurrect their wealth. ”

“ This is a true story of a search for buried treasure. The only part that is not true is the name of the man with whom I searched for the treasure. Unless I keep his name out of it he will not let me write the story, and, as it was his expedition and as my share of the treasure is only what I can make by writing the story, I must write as he dictates. I think the story should be told, because our experience was unique, and might be of benefit to others. ”

“ As to buried treasure, it is supposed that this is always guarded by a spirit, sometimes good, sometimes evil, and generally that some evil will befall those who meddle with it. In the immediate vicinity of concealed treasure at night, upon the plain, the peones say that a mysterious light is seen hovering over the spot, especially when damp and misty. ”

“ Fingers—Bow—Sand.”
“Is that the meaning?” said the girl, with great eagerness. “How wonderful! I knew my uncle had a reason for his excitement. I had partly, but only partly, deciphered this for myself. I had discovered about the buried treasure; but what—what does the latter part mean, Dr. Cato? What have Fingers—Bow—Sand to do with buried treasure?”
“I wish I knew,” I replied.
“It seems to me,” continued Miss Seafield, “that here may be the key to get me out of my difficulty. I dream of this disc day and night, and the words 'buried treasure' are ever ringing in my ears. ”

“ Waking, I cry "Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart." ”

“ I really believe that all the legends that have been handed down in our families are based on a reality. There must be somewhere about here buried, or hidden, treasure; and that treasure one of these days will become the property of him, or of those who shall be the possessors of the talisman—that is to say, of the gold medal which was stolen from my father. ”

“ The maxim408 — “That which you have not put down, do not take up” — is rigorously enforced: 398any man who finds a buried treasure is prohibited from touching it, though he find it by accident and though the person who buried it be unknown. ”

“ He informed him that much secrecy and caution must be observed in enterprises of this kind; that money is only to be digged for at night; with certain forms and ceremonies, and burning of drugs; the repeating of mystic words, and above all, that the seekers must first be provided with a divining rod, which had the wonderful property of pointing to the very spot on the surface of the earth under which treasure lay hidden. ”

“ A year from now you can write the story.” As I moved in a dazed state toward the steel door, his voice halted me.
“And you can say in your story,” called Edgar, “that there is only one way to get a buried treasure. ”

“ In both cases, the treasure which is intentionally and intelligently buried is liable to be lost through the removal or death of those who were in the secret. Such secreted and lost wealth is afterwards from time to time found by those who build houses or cultivate the soil. In all lands and ages some such hoards have been actually discovered, and many such have been imagined and expected by the credulous. The conditions of the treasure that may be buried under ground exist in substances widely different from gold and silver and precious stones. ”

“ They were also of opinion that buried treasure caused the ghosts of the owners to haunt the places of concealment; and many of our country population retain the same opinions without the slightest modification. ”

“ Yet it is a mysterious Providence that impels any poor fellow to dig his pile bury it for safekeeping, and then go off and die in some out-of-the-way place without being able to leave any will and testament as to the exact hole where his savings lay. Regarding buried treasure, there is a hill near Jamestown concerning which, years ago, there hovered a legend that it held somewhere thousands of dollars in dust, buried in the early days by a lone miner, who{134} was, for his money’s sake, murdered in his cabin. ”

“ The immense treasure of gold, silver, bronze, fine stone and ivory objects, which was buried with the sixteen corpses in this circle, is worth intrinsically more than any treasure-trove known to have been found in any land, and it revealed once for all the character of a great civilization preceding the Hellenic. ”

“ Since neither he who buried the gold nor he who worked in the field intended that the money should be found, but, as I said, it happened by coincidence that one dug where the other buried the treasure. ”

“ And as it is his invariable practice to secrete and bury his booty, and from the perilous life he leads, being often killed or captured, he can never revisit the spot again, therefore immense sums remain buried in those places and are irrevocably lost. Search is often made by persons who labor in anticipation of throwing up with their spade and pickaxe, gold bars, diamond crosses sparkling amongst the dirt, bags of golden doubloons and chests wedged close with moidores, ducats and pearls ”

“ When any of these savages die, he is buried in a grave constructed of stones near the sea-side, all his darts being fastened about his tomb, and his treasure, consisting of shells, laid under his head. ”

“ An old woman once told a treasure-seeker that she had always heard that a treasure was buried at a certain place in the fields. The man, who was known as an expert in the art of using the divining rod, immediately set out to locate the gold. ”

“ People's attention was the more attracted to the incident because popular fancy had long run upon a tradition of buried treasures, golden treasures, in or about the antiquated ruin which the garden boundary enclosed ”

“ There are the usual traditions about buried treasures in the buildings, and every little while somebody tries to find them. Nothing of value has ever been discovered, but the digging that forms a necessary part of every search is a serious injury to the sculptures and walls. ”

“ If one has a spark of imagination, he smacks his lips. Instead of legend and myth, here is a veritable pirate's hoard, exactly as it should be, with its bags of gold, bars of silver, "Rubies great and small," candlesticks and porringers, diamonds and so on. The inventory contains also other booty found in the course of the treasure hunt, and lest the document itself may prove too hard reading, its contents are transcribed as follows to convince the most skeptical mind that there was a real Kidd treasure and that it was found in the Year of our Lord, 1699. ”

“ A valuable jewel to be buried in the grave of a beloved person, or thrown over with a corpse at sea, or deposited under the foundation-stone of an edifice,—and to be afterwards met with by the former owner, in some one's possession. ”

“ If he is a scholar he will perhaps say something like this: "In ancient times real valuables were thrown into the grave. Money, jewels, animals, even living men and women were once buried with the dead. ”

“ The removal, handful by handful, of the earth from the grave of the past which the whole Forum is, tomb upon tomb, is as dramatic a spectacle as anything one can well witness; for that soil is richer than any gold-mine in its potentiality of treasure, and it must be strictly scrutinized, almost by particles, lest some gem of art should be cast aside with the accumulated rubbish of centuries. ”

“ In burial customs, with their numerous little superstitious observances, the survival of folk-memory is well displayed. It is needless to repeat the evidence here—how, in recent years, objects have been surreptitiously, and even openly, buried with the dead; how the funeral feast, in an attenuated form, lingers on; how we still scrupulously don the funeral garb, once the sign of deprecation or fear; how graveyard teeth are used as charms and remedies. ”

“ The treasure was there, heaped in staggering profusion—piles of diamonds, sapphires, rubies, turquoises, opals, emeralds; ziggurats of jade, jet and lapis lazuli; pyramids of gold wedges; teocallis of silver ingots; jewel-hilted swords in cloth-of-gold sheaths; golden helmets with colored horsehair crests, or black and scarlet plumes; silver scaled corselets; gem-crusted harness worn by warrior-kings three thousand years in their tombs; goblets carven of single jewels; skulls plated with gold, with moonstones for eyes; necklaces of human teeth set with jewels. ”

“ I could not help gazing at these riches buried in the entrails of mother earth, of which no man would have the enjoyment to the end of time! These treasures—mighty and inexhaustible, were buried in the morning of the earth's history, at such awful depths, that no crowbar or pickax will ever drag them from their tomb! The light of our Ruhmkorf's coil, increased tenfold by the myriad of prismatic masses of rock, sent their jets of fire in every direction, and I could fancy myself traveling through the huge hollow diamond, the rays of which produced myriads of extraordinary effects. ”

“ I never told the buried gold
Opon the hill that lies -
I saw the sun, his plunder done -
Crouch low to guard his prize -
He stood as near
As stood you hear -
A pace had been between -
Did but a snake bisect the brake
My life had forfeit been. ”

“ The bodies of the rich were interred in those lofty walls with their gilded inscriptions; those of the poor were buried in the earth without any token of memorial, without even a green sod over them, or a flower or shrub to speak of life above the grave ”

“ The chief reason which calls them back again to visit the world by night, is their fondness for some old broad pieces, or a pot of money, they buried in their life-time; and they cannot rest to have it lie useless, therefore the gold raises them before the resurrection. ”

“ For me to snatch this casket from its hiding-place was the work of an instant. Straightway I removed the golden lid, and there, in the smooth, transparent nest of crystal, lay a little heap of gems that flashed and gleamed like living fire.
"Recovering from my first emotions of astonishment and delight, I poured forth the treasure into the hollow of my hand, and found it to be a necklace of diamonds, as I could tell from the dazzling sparkle of the stones despite their uncommon colour, which was blue, like the vault of the sky or the eyes of the fair-skinned women of Circassia. ”

“ The property of which he has not otherwise disposed during his life, is then buried with him; and his friends continue, for a long period, to revisit the grave, and make offerings of food, arms, and cooking utensils. ”

“ At the present period numerous relics of antiquity, as coins, jewels, &c., are occasionally discovered, particularly after the rains, when the torrents break down fragments of the ruins, and carry with the streams of water the long-buried mementos of the riches of former generations to the profit of the researching villagers, and to the gratification of curious travellers, who generally prove willing purchasers. ”

“ The relics which you have asked for are to be buried by themselves, that the place in which the aforesaid body lies may be altogether closed up, and the people not suffered to desert the certain and worship the uncertain. ”

“ For ornaments of the living at this early period of civilisation we have ever to go to the dead. They were buried in graves arranged in rows, over which low mounds were raised, as is the custom to-day. Here they have been found—these tall, big-boned ancestors of ours—lying on their backs, sometimes in wooden coffins, more often in the bare earth, all in full dress: the men with sword and spear, women with ornaments and jewels. ”