Treasure hunter

“ Here I will mention the essential articles you should take along on your next treasure hunting expedition.
First, I would put down on my list a metal detector, of course. Next, I would take a folding Army trench shovel. These can be purchased in almost all Army surplus stores. Next, I would take along my camera, movie or still, and several rolls of film. A permanent record on film can be enjoyed in years to come. The next article to be brought along should be an iron probing bar. You could make your own or purchase one from the metal detector dealer. ”

“ These treasure hunters of Philadelphia, who had seen with their own eyes more than one notorious pirate, even Blackbeard himself, swagger along Front Street or come roaring out of the Blue Anchor Tavern by Dock Creek, were finding their reward in the coin of romance. Digging mighty holes for a taskmaster would have been irksome, stupid business indeed, even for five shillings a day. ”

“ With their thoughts on the Rainbow and those on board, the treasure hunters went back to the vicinity of the shattered cave. Nobody felt much like working, yet to remain idle made the time hang heavily on their hands. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The flaw in the business of treasure hunting, outside of fiction, is that the persons equipped with the shovels and picks and the ancient charts so seldom find the hidden gold. The energy, credulity, and persistence of these explorers are truly admirable but the results have been singularly shy of dividends the world over. There is 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 and fetched home more of it than any other adventurer known to this kind of quest. ”

“ The toilers had been paid in richer stuff than gold. They had lived the true romance, nor could a man of spirit and imagination wish for anything more to his taste than to be encamped on a desert island, with the surf shouting in his ears, the sea birds crying, all hands up with daybreak to dig for buried treasure whose bearings were found on a tarpaulin chart that had belonged to a pirate with a deep scar across his cheek. ”

“ There, indeed, is the prize for the treasure seeker of to-day who dreams of doubloons and pieces of eight. Nor could pirate hoard have a more blood-stained, adventurous history than these millions upon millions, lapped by the tides of Vigo Bay, which were won by the sword and lost in battle. During these last two hundred years many efforts have been made to recover the freightage of this fleet, but the bulk of the treasure is still untouched, and it awaits the man with the cash and the ingenuity to evolve the right salvage equipment. ”

“ Oh! if he were but left to his own goodness of heart! how happy should we be, and how happy would he be himself! But have courage, my dear Percival, we shall succeed, for we will merit his love; and he will be just." I received my present with more contentment of heart than I can express; and Mary begged I would be her purse-bearer for the greater part of her treasure, adding, that she had no other means of securing it from her sister's enquiry, who took upon her to examine her drawers at her pleasure. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Divers and submarine craft and wrecking companies have made many attempts to recover these vanished riches, and with considerable success, now and then fishing up large amounts of gold coin and bullion. It goes without saying that the average sixteen-year-old boy could extract not one solitary thrill from a tale of lost treasure in the Great Lakes, even though the value might be fairly fabulous. ”

“ There is some temptation to the feat; for men say a treasure lies hidden in a cave which opens out of the sheer walls, and the gold is enough to make a whole village rich. If any doubt it, let him go there on the stroke of midnight. As the hour sounds, he will see the guardian of the hoard appear at the top of the ravine, a dark mailed warrior, mounted on a sable steed, who leaps into the gulf and vanishes when mortal men accost him. There was once a wizard living at no great distance from Sorrento whose dreams were haunted by the craving for this treasure. ”

“ Captain Depeyster left Dilly, with the treasure saved from the wreck of his ship, for Batavia, and there chartered the American brig 'Pocahontas,' to carry it to Canton. Mr. Smith's agent there rechartered her to take as much of the proceeds of the treasure as she could carry in teas and silks to New York, where she safely arrived in charge of the first officer, Mr. Teel (Captain Snow having died on the passage) , close upon ten months from Whampoa.
'A good full,' cries out the second mate to the man at the wheel as a breeze springs up. ”

“ Like the prospector who finds gold in the wilderness and straightway shoulders his pack to seek for further treasure, his unwearying soul drove him on in steadfast pursuit of that which lay just over the hill. ”

“ All these forms of robbery, except the last, may call for the sympathy of every reader of these lines who happens not to have cultivated that vaguely defined “archæological sense” which is, practically, the product of this present generation alone; and in the instances which are here to be given the point of view of the “Theban thief” will be readily appreciated.
Treasure hunting is a relic of childhood that remains, like all other forms of romance and adventure, a permanently youthful feature in our worn old hearts. ”

“ The folk-lore of almost every race is rich in buried treasure stories. The pirate with his stout sea chest hidden above high-water mark is lineally descended from the enchanting characters who lived in the shadow land of myth and fable. The hoard of Captain Kidd, although he was turned off at Execution Dock only two hundred years ago, has become as legendary as the dream of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. ”

“ During the north-east monsoon fires were quite frequent in the densely populated suburbs lying north of the factories. When they threatened the foreign quarter the Hong merchants, acting in consonance with the known wishes of the Mandarins, would send gangs of armed coolies to assist in the removal to boats provided by them of books, papers, treasure, and personal effects. All strange Chinese would be ruthlessly driven from the Square, and an unobstructed passage to the boats secured. ”

“ What treasure sunk into the sea by whatsoever lost ship—galleons piled up and bursting with the gold and silver of Spain, or strange triangular-sailed boats sailing from Tripoli with the many-coloured jewels of the east, "ivory, apes, and peacocks"—what treasure sunk there by man could be compared with the treasure already stored there by Nature, dropped as out of the dawn and the sunset into these unvisited waters by the lavish hand of God? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A real treasure hunt of the most thrilling kind, with a sunken Spanish galleon as its object, makes a subject of intense interest at any time, but add to that a band of desperate men, a dark plot and a devil fish, and you have the combination that brings strange adventures into the lives of the Bungalow Boys. ”

“ Just at this time I had heard that under the ruins of an ancient city, overgrown by trees, a great treasure was supposed to be concealed; and as I possessed a magic ointment which, when applied to the eyes, enabled me to see through the ground, I determined to try to dig it up. I therefore got together some strong young men with the promise of good pay, went to the place, and succeeded in finding a large quantity of gold and silver coin. ”

“ How many thousands of men have searched and dug and toiled to unearth that will-o’-the-wisp hoard no one can say. How much real money has been expended in that same vain quest, it is impossible to estimate, but beyond the shadow of a doubt the money spent in digging for this treasure is greatly in excess of all the gold and other riches William Kidd ever saw or hoped to see. ”

“ No lord in the island could gather such hoard of treasure, not even yours, Wulf the son of Wulf, and I shall fight you if you say so! No man hath seen such jewels, such vessels of gold and silver. There be a million golden cups set about with rubies; an hundred thousand vases of silver; and every woman hath a fan of gold, set with gems. And the jewels he hath loaded on our lady—man, thine eyes have never seen the like! ”

“ Before him, enveloped now in the deep gloom of the northern night, slept a vast unexplored world, a land whose story the passing of ages had left unrevealed. What tragedies of nature had its silent fastnesses beheld? What treasure did they hold? Half a century or more ago the men whose skeletons they had found in the old cabin had braved the perils of those trackless solitudes, and somewhere hundreds of miles out in that black gloom they had found gold, the gold that had fallen as an inheritance to them in the discovery of the old birch-bark map. ”

“ Hastily filling his pockets with gold, silver, and gems, he heeds not the presence of a dwarf or Fairy, who, as he unknowingly drops the Luck-flower whilst leaving the treasure-house, cries “Forget not the best of all.” Thinking only of the wealth he has pocketed, he unheedingly passes through the portal of the treasure cave, only just in time to save himself from being crushed by the descending door, which closes with an ominous clang, and shuts in for ever the Luck-flower, which can alone open the cave again. ”

“ At the bottom of Vigo Bay, on the coast of Spain, lies that fleet of galleons and one hundred millions of dollars in gold ingots and silver bars. This estimate is smaller than the documentary evidence vouches for. In fact, twenty-eight million pounds sterling is the accepted amount, but one hundred million dollars has a sufficiently large and impressive sound, and it is wise to be conservative to the verge of caution in dealing with lost treasure which has been made so much more the theme of fiction than a question of veracity. ”

“ The thief may hand in for disposal, at well-understood prices, ornaments in the most precious of metals, possibly treasure trove in the shape of some great wrought Saxon collar of gold, or Queen Anne silver plate. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As soon as the larger bell and the giant derrick could be put in service, the happy task of fishing up treasure was carried on at a great pace. Unlike many other such expeditions, nothing was done at haphazard. The toilers under water "were first to go to the outermost dollar, or other article of gold they could discover, and to place a pig of ballast, with a bright tally board fast to it, against and on the inner side of the nearest fixed rock they could find. ”

“ It would not be an unfitting conclusion for the adventure that was stained with so much blood already; and he imagined the sudden rising of the Moslem crew, the brief melée, the flash of pistols and knives, the massacre on the reeling deck. But he continued to sit on the keg, with his back to the helmsman, and did not trouble to turn around.
A yard beneath his feet were nearly two million dollars in hard gold; the treasure that had spun so much intrigue and mystery over three continents was in his power at last. ”

“ And now it was clear to his mind that somewhere on this coast there must have been a treasure ship wrecked, and that he had been selected as the chosen one to raise this buried treasure from the sea. From this time forth, this search for treasure became the passion of his life. He strove to conceal the golden nugget even from his friend, so that others might not discover his purpose. He neglected everything else, and spent his days and nights on this coast, not casting his net for fishes, but throwing out a scoop, that he had specially prepared for the purpose, for gold. ”

“ It is only about once in a blue moon that they do come upon treasure, but there is always the hope that any hour or day may bring them a big find.
Jewellery and coins, and silver goblets, are some of the treasures they seek, but the greatest of all is no less a thing than a table, a large and massive table, too, made of solid silver. ”