Transcript of
The Review [Vulcan, Alberta, CA], a.k.a. "The Vulcan Review",
1912-04-02. This is actually the same article as the first citation in
msg #6 of this thread by cw0909, published half a month earlier in
The Voice [Winnipeg, Manitoba, CA].
"
NOVA SCOTIA TREASURE
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COMPANY IS DIGGING FOR A REMARKABLE HOARD
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Oak Island Is the Scene of Operations Which Are Stranger Than Fiction-- At a Depth of 150 Feet Under the Ground the Boring Tools Have Struck Metal, Oak, Cement and Sheepskin With Lettering.
Another attempt is to be made to solve the mystery of the famous money pit on Oak Island, in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia. At the last attempt made some years ago some very remarkable discoveries were made, but for certain reasons they were not advertised abroad. As in the case of their predecessors, the treasure-seekers on this occasion were baulked by uncanny accidents which destroyed the labors of many months, but the tale of their doings is the most interesting and most convincing chapter in the history of this amazing quest for treasure trove. They demonstrated beyond a doubt that at a depth of over 150 feet below the surface of the ground something encased in cement and oak-wood lies buried, and that a tunnel was constructed to permit the sea-water to flow into the pit and baulk the efforts of anyone who did not know the secret of shutting off the sea to raise whatever may be at the bottom of the pit.
Captain J.W. Welling, who had charge of the operations on the last occasion when an attempt was made to solve the mystery, consented the other day to tell the story of his adventures and discoveries.
"When I went on the island to take charge of the work there, I was very sceptical," he said. "I had no money invested in the enterprise, and did not take any stock in the story of buried treasure. I got into it in this way. Some time previous I had left a ship and gone home to Amherst. I had hardly got there before some of my friends came to me, told me they had formed a company to search for the treasure on Oak Island, and asked me to go down and take charge of the work. They said the man they had appointed manager was not giving satisfaction, and that so far he had done little or nothing.
"Well I laughed at them, and told them that they could find better use for money than putting it in holes in Oak Island. But they had the treasure-hunting fever, and insisted that I take the job. So at last I consented and went down to the island. I found very little had been done, and that things were about as they had been represented to me, and wrote back home advising my friends to quit. But they told me to go ahead. So I got a good new gang of men, most of them good miners, and went to work. I had only been at work a short time when a strange thing happened. An old man who said he was from the United States came to the island, and declared he could tell just where the treasure was, if it consisted of gold. He had a divining rod, and he began to experiment with it. After a few moment [sic] he said we were digging in the wrong place, and, stepping aside a few yards, told us we would find the treasure under the place where he was standing. Then he walked away, and his divining rod kept pointing towards the place he said the treasure was. He spent a little time taking measurements along the surface of the ground and noting the angles of his divining rod. Then he made some calculations and informed us that the treasure was located at a depth of between 150 and 160 feet.
"After that I took the old man in a boat and rowed him off the island. At a mile away hid divining rod pointed towards the Money Pit, at a great angle with the perpendicular, and three miles away it still pointed towards the Money Pit. The old man was a bit excited. He said there must be a big quantity of treasure there.
"And this old man did another peculiar thing. He said: 'I hear there is a tunnel running from the pit to the shore below low water; I've never seen a map of the island, and don't know where the tunnel is, but I'll wager any money you like I'll show you just where it runs.' Then he got a small switch, took a turn around the Money Pit, and started off to the shore, walking right over the line of the tunnel. When he came near the shore he said: 'Now that's funny. The water seems to me as far down here as it is near the Pit.'
"The old man went away, and I have never seen or heard of him from that day to this. At the time I did not take any stock in what he said. I was satisfied that we were digging in the right spot, and that nobody would dig a hole 150 feet deep to bury anything in. We supposed then that the mystery was located at a depth of a little over 100 feet. As for the tunnel, we thought it sloped up from the pit towards the low water mark.
"Well, we kept on working in the pit, which we supposed was the Money Pit. We were bothered a great deal with water, but with the aid of pumps we managed to get down to a depth of 105, where we struck a cross tunnel, driven by the Halifax Company. We worked through this tunnel, and found that it ran into a shaft which had been roofed over. And this shaft was exactly in the position the old man with the divining rod said the Money Pit was located.
"Going to the surface we broke ground over this shaft and worked down thirty feet when we struck a solid platform which had evidently been placed there by the Halifax Company, and from which they had filled the pit to the surface. At the bottom of this shaft the water boiled in a peculiar manner described by former excavators, and we concluded it was the Money Pit.
"We cleaned out this pit and worked down to 113 feet, at which depth on the side next to Smith's Cove we came to what we supposed to be the entrance to the pirate tunnel. At any rate, we found in the puddled clay wall of the Pit a space about three feet wide filled with beach stones. From among the stones and gravel I found a chip of wood and a piece of bark. The beach stones were exactly like the stones on the beach at Smith's Cove, and if you go there to-day you can notice the places where large quantities of stones were removed from the beach years ago.
"In the meantime we had been boring in the Money Pit. Our machine had been set up over the pit mouth, and we commenced boring a two and a half inch hole. As I said, the pit had been opened to a depth of 113 feet, but it was then full of water to tide level, which was about 32 feet below the surface. At a depth of 126 feet we bored through oak wood in good preservation, and struck the edge of a piece of iron. An attempt to pipe this hole was made, but the pipe was turned by the iron obstruction and went off to one side through puddled clay. When it was drawn out the side of the pipe was cut as if with a coal chisel for 1 1-2 [sic] inches, and a piece was broken off.
"We then attached a 1 1-2 inch drill to the machine, worked past the iron at 126 feet, and continued on down. At 153 feet 8 inches we struck what was first thought to be sandstone, but was afterwards found to be hard cement. We bored through 7 inches of cement, and then through 5 inches of solid oak wood. When through the wood the augur [sic] dropped about 1 1-2 inches and rested upon what seemed to be soft metal. The augur was carefully withdrawn and the borings were preserved. Among these boring [sic] was a small piece of sheepskin parchment upon which were written characters-- apparently parts of the letters "vi" or "ui" or "wi."
When the augur was withdrawn it was replaced by a boring chisel, and with this by twisting the rods we managed in the course of five hours or more to work down through 2 feet 8 inches of metal in pieces, and struck a soft metal into which we could force the chisel and make it stick. We hauled up the chisel and found it was as sharp as when it went down.
"We then decided to pipe this hole and try to secure a sample of the metal. With this idea in view we lowered a small pipe, but though we managed to get it past the obstruction at 126 feet it was turned from its course, did not go down to the cement, and the hole was lost.
"The company's funds were exhausted by that time, and the bigger shareholders were adverse to the idea of taking in outsiders. They thought that they would be able to raise the money necessary to get more pumps and boilers on their own account in a short time, and it was decided to floor the bottom of the Money Pit and put everything in shape to withstand the water and prevent the cribbing from settling, which was accordingly done, and the work was abandoned in the hope of being able to resume operations in a short time.
"But the four men who were the life and soul of the company all died within three months.
"After that a dozen men in Amherst held a meeting and agreed to raise the money necessary to go on with the work; but somebody had been telling tales of the very strange things that had befallen us during the course of our labors, and some of their lady friends convinced them that the island was enchanted, and that some witchcraft guarded that box of metal in the Money Pit."
Although Captain Welling went to Oak Island in a sceptical frame of mind, his experience there made him a firm believer in the existence of a great treasure in the Money Pit, and after the death of the four principal men in the old company, he and Mr. F.L. Blair, of Amherst, Nova Scotia, took over the lease of the island. Many people are familiar with the legend that Captain Kidd buried $10,000,000 on Oak Island, a legend which arose from the discovery by some of the earlier diggers of a flat stone bearing an inscription which somebody said conveyed the information which is the basis of the legend. But Captain Welling believes the treasure was put there long before Kidd's time, and that it is a much bigger treasure than Kidd gathered together. And certainly it is impossible to imagine any body of men burying an oak box encased in cement and full of soft metal at a depth of over one hundred and fifty feet on a secluded island, and to construct a tunnel which must have cost months of weary labor, unless they had a tremendous treasure to hide-- some great religious or national treasure. And then, what of the mystery beyond the piece of iron at a depth of 10 [sic] feet? The whole story of this island is amazing; but Captain Welling's discoveries only deepened the mystery.
When the piece of parchment which the augur brought up from the box was sent to a professor in Nova Scotia who knows something about such things, he pronounced it be a piece of very old sheepskin parchment. In order that there might be no doubt of the matter, this man sent it to an authority in Boston without explaining where it came from. The Boston expert wrote back that the specimen sent him was a piece of sheepskin parchment of a kind that had not been manufactured for 250 years, and that the characters on it had been written by a quill pen using Indian ink.
As to the tunnel, there seems to be satisfactory evidence that it was the work of men. The Halifax Company which made an effort to solve the mystery in 1850 made some interesting discoveries on the shore of Smith's Cove. With a view to locating the inlet to the tunnel they removed the sand and gravel covering the beach, and came to a covering or bed of a brown, fibrous plant, resembling the husk of a cocoanut [sic]. This fibre, specimens of which were previously found in the Money Pit, was proved to be a tropical plant, and in former times was used as dunnage in stowing the cargo of ships. This bed of brown fibre was two inches in depth and spread over a considerable area. Underlying this was four or five inches of decayed sea-grass, and under this was a compact moss of beach stones free from sand.
Captain Welling, who with F.L. Blair, of Amherst, N.S., holds a lease of Oak Island, is at present chief officer of the Government dredge W.S. Fielding, engaged in deeping [sic] the entrance to the harbor of St. John.
"
--GT
