Harold T. Wilkins "Strange Adventures of Treasure-Hunters To-Day" in
Chamber's Journal (1931), 429-444.
STRANGE ADVENTURES OF TREASURE-HUNTERS TO-DAY. 429
By HAROLD T. WILKINS, Author of Hunting Hidden Treasures, Pirate Treasure, &c.
I.
PART I.
THE old-time hidden-treasure hunter who was
started on his thrilling quest by a piece
of tarpaulin enclosing a crude chart, marked
with anchors, spouting dolphins, and mysterious
crosses, stolen from the sea-chest of a swarthy
mariner dying in a plague hospital in the West
Indies, belongs to the spacious past. To-day,
treasure-hunters are organised on strictly scientific
lines, with a university professor or a scientific
explorer in the syndicate. An exploration ship,
or 'science steamer,' with floating laboratories
and dissection-rooms, sent out by a learned
society, on mainly scientific ends, may call, in
passing, at some lonely outpost in the South
Seas, marked only on an Admiralty chart and
mentioned only in sailing directions. And, in
intervals of collecting deep-sea specimens, of
chasing butterflies ashore, the more adventurous
members snatch an opportunity to explore cliffs
and caves suspected of having been the bank'
of some buccaneer or less glorious pirate of the
eighteenth or early nineteenth century.
In other cases, firms with plenty of capital
press into the search the latest salvage appliances,
radio metal-detectors, drills and tunnel-borers,
wherewith they drain away lakes, blast to bits
high hills, and pile up earth and rocks in thou-
sands of tons by the aid of steam-shovels and
dynamite.
Not long ago, Professor Leonard Hill,
F.R.S., was testing off Lowestoft a remarkable
diving-suit he has invented. There is,' said
he, now open a possibility of treasure-hunting
which must fire the imaginations of young folk.'
Hardly had he uttered these words when Dr
Thomas Gann, the well-known explorer of
Honduras, told B.B.C. listeners that he was
anxious to hear from healthy young men of
adventurous temperaments, who, with the aid
of charts and plans he would furnish, would
hunt for a treasure-cache deep in the unknown
jungle of British Honduras.
'Some time ago,' says Dr Gann, 'I was in
Italy, when there came to my hands a treasure-
chart drawn up by a Mr Carmichael, who, about
seventy years ago, was living in the Petén
district of Guatemala. A roving band of bush
Indians told him of a lost Aztec treasure-
temple hidden in the recesses of the dense
jungle. He set out into the jungle, and, after
a long search, found the temple, but not the
treasure. Armed with his charts, I myself set
out in 1927, along with Captain Joyce of the
British Museum. We were beaten back by the
impassable forest and lack of water. I am dead
sure the treasure is there, if we can only find
it. The Indians showed Carmichael a gold
ornament brought back from the mysterious
temple.'
Central America holds many mysterious trea-
sure-caches dating from the revolutionary days
when the old Spanish colonies of the New
World revolted against the court of Madrid, and
piratical brigs, snows, and schooners were raking
with their topsails the tall trees and feathery
palms of shining coves and mangrove-fringed
lagoons. Generations of long-dead adventurers,
who have left modern representatives, have
sought to locate these rich hoards, but often
chance, rather than the picks, shovels, and drills
of the diggers, has laid bare the shining
doubloons.
One such case happened in January 1930,
when a cable to the New York Herald told how
a lucky road-navvy working on the Vera-Cruz-
Cordoba road had hit with his pick two old
earthenware pots brimming with Spanish doub-
loons. All work was stopped, and the lucky
man threw down his tools, while his mates
frenziedly dug up the earth for more valuables.
But all they found was some human bones.
Where is the treasure of the Mexican hill
called 'The Lock of the Hoard' On the jungle-
clad slopes of this mysterious hill in southern
Mexico lies, still undiscovered, an immense store
of silver ingots. The story is that they were
concealed by Spanish miners flying from Mexican
rebels. Following the example of the old-time
pirate, who is alleged always to have slain a
negro cook or sailor Jonah' and buried the
corpse on top of the treasure-chest to guard the
hoard in the lone cove, these Spanish fugitives
slew all the Indian labourers to keep secret the
location of the cache. Then they drew up a
plan of the workings, which came into the posses-
sion of an aged priest, who sold the chart to
two American prospectors. The Americans sur-
veyed the hill and found the sites of old build-
ings and the ancient creek-sluiced workings in
which the ore was washed. All had been accur-
ately marked on the chart, which clearly showed
the entrances to the tunnels of the mines.
Climatic troubles and fever are said to have
stopped the operations.
II.
Hundreds must be the number of adventurers,
including land-lubbers, whalemen, naval officers,
miners, and even women and journalists, who
have vainly sought to solve the secret of the
famous Cocos Island cache. It is safe to say
there will be hundreds more in the years ahead.
430
CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL.
Two picturesque pirates-one of them, Benito
Bonito, a Portuguese officer of good family,
later pirate, captain of the Relampago (Spanish
for 'lightning flash'), who, in 1822, is said to
have lain in wait for and captured an immense
treasure of eleven million dollars, escorted by the
Mexican troops of President Agustin Iturbide
-have buried treasure in a cave on this island,
five hundred and fifty miles out in the Pacific,
off the coast of Costa Rica, to which it belongs.
The other pirate is Captain Thompson, the run-
away mate of the British schooner Mary Dear,
who is also said to have hidden on the north
side of Chatham Bay, in Cocos Island, eleven
boatloads of treasure looted from Lima, in the
days of Bolivar, the Liberator, and the Anglo-
Chilian admiral, Lord Dundonald. A great deal
of this treasure was actually lifted by two New-
foundlanders, Bogue and Keating, who sailed
to Cocos in the schooner Red Gauntlet, in or
before 1846. According to Judge Prowse of
Newfoundland, Keating raised no less than a
hundred and ten thousand dollars of the treasure
when he made a second trip to Cocos.
Myths have sprung up like vampire bats on
a night of tropic moonshine about this treasure
of Cocos Island, so that from Paumotu in the
west of the South Sea islands, to the Ladrones
or Marianne archipelago in the west, sixteen
hundred miles east of Luzon in the Philippines,
pirates under the command of Captain Thompson
are alleged, by generations of marine ancients
with lurid imaginations and a thirst for whisky
and unearned lucre, to have hidden rich Peruvian
treasures. The present writer is heartily sick
of warning fools in both England and America
to beware of stories of treasure-caches woven
round the name of Captain Thompson. In fact,
there are almost as many variants of the Cocos
Island story as of the legend of the Flying
Dutchman and Vanderdecken.
At the present time there is living in New
York a picturesque German sailor, who, by right
of long residence on Cocos Island and a conces-
sion from the government of Costa Rica, has
as good a claim to this treasure as anyone,
save the long-dead and forgotten citizens of
Lima. August Gissler, known as the 'hermit of
Cocos,' has found traces of buccaneers' camps,
old rusty arms and pots, and thirty-two stone
steps leading to a cave on Cocos Island. Empty
rum bottles he has dug up, but only one gold
coin-a doubloon of Charles III. of Spain,
dated 1788. He says the caches are now
covered with such tremendous landslides that
a great expenditure of money and much costly
engineering equipment would be needed by
any who seek to get at the treasures. Again
would one warn would-be treasure-hunters to
stop and think hard ere they set out for Cocos
or the companion treasure-island of Trinidad
(belonging to Brazil), on the other side of
the South-American continent, in the South
Atlantic. There, too, great landslides have
entirely obliterated the cache of pirate gold.
Before passing from Cocos, it may be recalled
that the well-known racing motorist, Captain
Malcolm Campbell, visited the island in 1925 in
the yacht Adventuress. The rainy season seems
to have stopped his treasure-hunting, and he
took away his only find in the shape of a
pirate's broken spade. The fascinating sug-
gestion that an 'Inca' temple he found on the
island may indicate that 'descendants of the
Incas may still be living on the unexplored
highlands of the interior of Cocos' is worth
investigation by archæologists. The naval
charts of the island consulted by the present
writer, including the old chart of Captain
Colnett, R.N., show there is much room for
further exploration, both to the south of this
strange island and in the interior.
III.
One heard that, in the late summer of 1929,
three men of the Basque country in northern
Spain set off for the palm-fringed lagoons of
Pinaki islet, east of Tahiti, in the South Pacific.
The Basques said they had found charts and
documents of the 'Gold Beetle' type, pointing
the way to bags and boxes of doubloons and
dollars, chests of Peruvian jewels, and sheep-
skin loads of silver ingots. There is an in-
teresting story behind this hunt for the treasure
of Pinaki islet, but it is probably not one of
which the Basque hunters are aware.
A dying beggar in a Sydney hospital, N.S.W.,
about the year 1905, told a
yarn which
induced an Australian syndicate to fit out an
expedition to this island in the Paumotu archi-
pelago. According to the dying man, fifty
years before he had been one of a gang of
pirates who ran away with a schooner anchored
outside Callao harbour, and freighted with a
hoard of jewels belonging to the Peruvian
churches and monasteries. Having no papers,
so the story went, they could not make an
Australian port, so they hid the treasure in
an uninhabited island of this archipelago, in-
tending to come back and dig up the loot.
Il luck prevented them from doing so. The
1905 syndicate heard about the treasure from
a man who had befriended the dying beggar
when he was down on his luck years before.
This good Samaritan, whose name, curiously
enough, is given as Thompson, spent eight
years vainly searching the island to find the
cache. Then he turned it over to the syndicate,
members of which were subsequently heard to
lament that Thompson ever listened to this yarn
of buried gold!
Another mariner, a respectable English cap-
tain, who sought for another treasure alleged
to have been buried by Captain Thompson on
one of the Ladrone or Marianne islands, had
good reason, in the 1890's, deeply to deplore
STRANGE ADVENTURES OF TREASURE-HUNTERS TO-DAY.
431
the undertaking. While he was ashore in the
Philippines, the Japanese mate and crew ran
away with his schooner and were never heard
of again!
The 'gold bug' fever broke out recently in
Peru, where natives overwhelmed the govern-
ment with applications to be allowed to dig
under the buildings of the 'Street of Orphans,'
in Lima, where, tradition says, great hoards
of ancient Inca and Spanish conquistadorian
treasure lie buried. One side of the Street of
One side of the Street of
Orphans has an old house wherein, three hundred
years ago, there died a Spanish adventurer who
is said to have hidden immense stores of heavy
gold plate, Spanish doubloons, onzas, and other
coins of the sixteenth century.
Some most romantic pirate treasure-caches
still await the seeker in North American and
Canadian waters and creeks. A short time ago
the writer unearthed a number of unpublished
records, still in manuscript only, of the days
of Queen Anne and George I. One of these
documents tells of a romantic pirate-cache of
buried treasure-which the writer believes to
be authentic-in a lonely creek, which, for
very good reasons, we will say is on the confines
of North Carolina, though, as a matter of fact,
the precise location of the actual cache is known
by the writer to be a few miles north of that
spot. So far as one's researches go-and they
are fairly long and extensive-this cache has
never been hunted for by modern treasure-
seekers, to whom, indeed, it is quite unknown.
Written in quaint and homely English, such
as would suit the style of an English naval
officer in the early eighteenth century, it tells
how a captain, in the service of the old British
East India Company, in the year 1719, was
warring on the fierce pirates of all nations
thronging Eastern waters, when he met an old
Portuguese sea captain, Anthony da Sylvestre,
who said he had been a seaman on one of two
sloops belonging to the infamous pirate Black-
beard' Teach, the terror of North American
waters in the days when Alexander Spotswood
was British governor of Virginia:
6
'He said if I went ashore at the Watering-
place in this creek, where the Shipping used
most commonly to ride, that there the Pyrates
had buried considerable sums of money in great
chests well clamp'd with Iron Plates.
as
As to my
part, I was never that way, nor much acquainted
with any that used those Parts. But I have made
Enquiry, and am inform'd there is such a place
If any Person who uses those
Parts should think it worth while to dig a
little way, at the upper End of a small sandy
Cove, where it is most convenient to land, he
would soon find whether the Information I
had was well grounded. Fronting the landing-
place are five trees, amongst which, he said,
the Money was hid. I cannot warrant the
Truth of this account; but if ever I was to
go there, I would by some means or other satisfy
myself, as it could not be a great deal out of
my way
The present writer has obtained the latest
official chart, dated 1928, of the area wherein
this pirate-cache is located, from which it is
apparent that soft and hard sand abuts on the
shore of this creek to-day, in which, at low tide,
an average of three feet of water is to be found.
About all these old and romantic caches are
generally 'snags,' on which, metaphorically,
the treasure-hunters' barque is apt to be wrecked.
Here the 'snag' will be the natural oblitera-
tion of landmarks in two and half centuries.
What such a pointer as the 'five trees fronting
the landing-place' may be worth will be guessed
from the remarkable and true story we shall now
tell of the Hidden Treasure of Montcalm.'
