The Book of Buried Treasure: Being a True History of the Gold, Jewels, and Plate of Pirates, Galleons, Etc., Which are Sought for to This Day (Classic Reprint)

In this tamed, prosaic age of ours, treasure-seek-
ing might seem to be the peculiar province of fiction,
but the fact is that expeditions are fitting out every
little while, and mysterious schooners flitting from
many ports, lured by grimy, tattered charts pre-
sumed to show where the hoards were hidden, or
steering their courses by nothing more tangible than
legend and surmise. As the Kidd tradition survives
along the Atlantic coast, so on divers shores of other
seas persist the same kind of wild tales, the more con-
vincing of which are strikingly alike in that the lone
survivor of the red-handed crew, having somehow
escaped the hanging, shooting, or drowning that he
handsomely merited, preserved a chart showing
where the treasure had been hid. Unable to return to
the place, he gave the parchment to some friend or
shipmate, this dramatic transfer usually happening
as a death-bed ceremony. The recipient, after dig-
ging in vain and heartily damning the departed
pirate for his misleading landmarks and bearings,
handed the chart down to the next generation.

It is really more entertaining to know that such charts
and records exist and are made use of by the expedi-
tions of the present day. Opportunity knocks at
the door. He who would gamble in shares of such
a speculation may find sun-burned, tarry gentlemen,
from Seattle to Singapore, and from Capetown to
New Zealand, eager to whisper curious information
of charts and sailing directions, and to make sail
and away.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS; chapter page; I The World-Wide Hunt fok Vanished Riches 3; II Cattain KlDD in FaCT and fiction 20; III Captain Kidd, IIis Tre