Inestimable Stones, Unvalued Jewels

 A Book Review from ~1930/drf

"Inestimable Stones, Unvalued Jewels."

Being and appreciation of “Lost Treasure: True Tales of Hidden Hoards,”By A. Hyatt Verrill (Published by Appleton)

From Illustrated London News, 1930. Researched by Dennis Lien; digitized by Doug Frizzle, May 2012.

In the history of the art of fiction there is no greater pioneer and innovator than Edgar Allan Poe. It is to him that we owe the detective story; it was he who discovered in the search for Treasure, a theme more profitable for novelists than for pirates. The "Gold Bug" has had numerous progeny. Auri sacra fames is an appetite so deeply implanted in the human breast (at any rate in the European breast) that its potency communicates itself onto the printed page; and the same force that impels men to crime also persuades them to read.

In real life, the quest for the Lost Treasure, like the quest for happiness, seems destined to fail. Of all the enterprises recorded by Mr. Verrill, beginning with the activities of the Spaniards in Mexico and Peru, and going down to the present day, few have been completely successful. One of the luckiest treasure-seekers was Captain Phips, afterwards Sir William Phips and Governor of Massachusetts. His first venture, in which he has a partner no less distinguished than King Charles II., came to nothing; but the second, sanctioned by James II, and financed by the Duke of Albemarle, yielded a harvest worth two million dollars. Of this Phips received only eighty thousand; but it was enough to set him up for life. The king's share was two hundred thousand.

Phips’s treasure came from a Spanish galleon, one of a fleet of sixteen bearing silver from the Peruvian mines, that had gone ashore only forty years before on the Island of the Silver Shoals. Phips kept a log in which he put down the daily progress made in the work of salvage. The entries are thrilling.

“This morning our Captain sent a longboat on board Mt. Rogers which in a shoart time returned, weh made our hearts very gladd to see, which was 4 Sows of silver, 4 barr, 7 Champers, 2 dowboyds, 2000 and odd dollars, by wch. we understood they had found the wrecke." Phips was evidently a man who expected his employees to work their utmost. Even when treasure began to come up by the ton he was still unsatisfied. On March 3 he reports: “2399 poundes weight of coined silver which we putt in 32 baggs. The dyvers could make no great hand of their work." He did not forget to observe the Sabbath: "This day being ye Lordsday we rested, notwithstanding ye weather was fair, it is almost tempting Providence so to waste His gifts." They went on working, with occasional pauses to give the divers a rest, until April 14, by which time "Ye dyvers find there is but little left within ye wrecke."

Two million dollars seems a lot of money; but it must have gone to Phips's heart to sail away leaving the remaining fifteen galleons with their treasure intact, as, perhaps, it remains to this day.

But this considerable sum is a mere bagatelle compared with the treasure which the Spaniards left behind in Peru. They were not only very cruel but very foolish in their treatment of the Indians. "Prior to the seventeenth ceutury,” says Mr. Verrill, "the greatest treasures in the history of the world were the incalculable accumulations of gold, silver, pearls, and gems of the Aztec and Incan civilisations. Such things had no intrinsic value in the estimations of the natives. They were not regarded as riches, as wealth, not as money, but were prized merely for their beauty, their imperishable character, the ease with which they could be worked, and their symbolism, and they were used only as ceremonial and religious objects, as ornaments, and as decorations. Among the Aztecs, copper was more highly prized than gold, jadeite was looked upon as more desirable than gems, and bits of sea-shells were regarded as preferable to pearls.

"Moreover, as the precious metals were not in general use, but were largely restricted to the temples, the palaces, the nobility, and the priesthood, they were concentrated, so to speak, instead of being scattered among millions of individuals."

At first the Spaniards could have had, and did have, all they wanted for the asking. The natives, regarding them as demi-gods, and immortal, loaded them with presents. But they were so greedy and immortal, loaded them with presents. But they were so greedy and importunate, at any rate in Peru, that they soon lost their reputation both for divinity and immortality. For combined treachery and tactlessness Pizarro's treatment of Atahualpa is surely without parallel. It is some consolation to think that, besides making his name a by-word in history, it cost him and his myrmidons about a hundred and thirty million dollars.

Mr. Verrill’s account of the negotiations which preceded the murder of the King is extremely graphic and well told. Captured by treachery, Atahualpa, who had "discovered that the Spaniards' one and paramount desire was gold," tried to strike a bargain with their commander for his ransom. Standing in a room twenty feet by eighteen (the room existed until a few years ago), he offered to cover the floor with gold if only they would set him free. The Spaniards shook their heads, thinking be could never fulfil his promise; and he, mistaking their meaning, thought that his offer had been insufficient. Standing on tip-toe, he made a mark on the wall as high as his hand could reach (he was not a tall man, so the height would be about seven feet). "Not only will I cover the floor of the room with the metal you desire, but I will fill it to this height," he said. "And twice as much silver will I give besides." Quick to take advantage of his opportunity, Pizarro immediately indicated a spot two feet further up; and Atahualpa agreed to fill the room to this height.

The treasure was not, of course, forthcoming on the spur of the moment. It had to be fetched long distances, much of it from the Temple of the Sun at Cuzco, which Atahualpa had never visited. The Spaniards grew impatient as the arrival of the ransom was still delayed; perhaps they thought that the King would not or could not produce it. At all events, they murdered him. The news of his death reached simultaneously two long trains of carriers loaded with treasure, one coming from Chuquis, the other from Cuzco. (In the Cuzco consignment there was a chain of gold seven hundred feet long, weighing ten tons, and worth five million dollars.) When the bearers realised that their burden could not save the King and would only swell the pockets of the Spaniards, they straightway hid it, and hidden it still remains.

Cortes was much more humane and tactful than Pizarro. He told Montezuma's representative that the Spaniards suffered from a malady of the heart for which the only cure was gold. When one of the Aztecs expressed admiration for a helmet worn by a Spanish archer, Cortes offered to send it to Montezuma, and suggested that it should be returned "filled with gold dust." These pacific tactics succeeded admirably. Montezuma's entire treasure was placed at the disposal of the Spaniards. But Cortes, in his religious fanaticism, was not content with taking the votive offerings the Aztecs had made to their gods; he wanted the gods as well. This the Aztecs could not stomach. They turned on their persecutors and despoilers. One night, the Noche Triste, there was a frightful massacre, four hundred Spaniards, weighed down with booty, were killed or drowned in the canals that intersected the city of Tenochtitlan—and Montezuma's treasure was lost to Spain.

The first part of Mr. Verrill's book describes the fate of the treasures in Mexico and Peru. It is, perhaps, the most enthralling part. Nations were involved, cities besieged, and the sums at stake were enormous. Afterwards come chapters dealing with the treasures of pirates and buccaneers: Captain Kidd, Pirate Quelch, Brother Jonathan, Billy Bowlegs. These treasures, though there are romantic stories attached to them, seem small beer by comparison with the others. Captain Kidd, poor man, though hanged as a pirate, never had any treasure at all—or at most a small one, which he dutifully handed over to his Majesty's Government: the inventory of it still exists and is reproduced in the book. Brother Jonathan's treasure still lies, Mr. Verrill says, in Tristan da Cunha, "somewhere on the left hand side of the last house down in the direction of Little Beach, between the two waterfalls." In such a limited area it should be easy to find the treasure of the man who styled himself "Emperor" of that lonely island. Sir Francis Drake, one of the most successful of treasure-seekers, though he had to jettison a great part of his precious cargo for the sake of lightening the Golden Hind, brought back a very respectable amount to London; but his memoirs record that he was "greatly troubled" because some of the "chiefest men of the Court" refused to accept the gold on the ground that it had been won by piracy—squeamshness that does them great credit.

As time goes on and we reach the nineteenth century, piracy loses some of its glamour; men like Charles Gibbs (hanged in 1831) seem like common criminals. More interesting than the pirates themselves are the accounts of expeditions undertaken to recover their various treasures. It is no easy task among so many wonderful tales to select the most enthralling. Nothing could be more romantic than the history of the golden altar in the treasure of Panama, which has survived to the present day, thanks to the coat of white paint which deceived the sharp eyes of Sir Henry Morgan. Very lovely and romantic is the story of “El Dorado," the "Gilded Man," who gave his name to a great city. Every year the King and his people visited Lake Guatavita, to make sacrifice to its presiding deity; the people bearing their most precious possessions, the King smeared with gum and anointed with gold dust. Embarking on a raft, the King was rowed to the middle of the lake. Then he plunged in and washed off his golden coat, while the multitudes around sang and threw their offerings into its waters. How ignoble, by comparison, seems the action of the British company which, in 1903, obtained permission to drain the lake! The operation proved easy enough, for the lake is a small one. But the goddess was not to be robbed of her treasures. No sooner was the water drawn off than the mud at the bottom set as hard as cement, defying the picks and shovels of the excavators. Like nearly all treasure-seekers, they had to retire discomfited.

I have no space to describe the search for the mysterious treasure of Oak Island, the most extraordinary story of the whole collection, and one which shows Mr. Verrill's narrative gift at its best. His literary style is not impeccable; it contains some curious phrases—e.g., "he kept his level head." But no one can read his book without longing, a score of times, to leap from his chair and set out incontinently for Cuzco or Cocos Island. L. P. H.

Review, 'In the Wake of the Buccaneers'

In the Seas of the Dead Man’s Chest: A Pirate-Ship’s Cruise,

A book review of "In The Wake of the Buccaneers." By A, Hyatt Verrill.*

From the Illustrated London News, 1923. Researched by Dennis Lien; digitized by Doug Frizzle, May 2012.

Sam, black as ebony and muscled like a Hercules, pilot and “captain" of the Vigilant, cared nothing about pirates and had no desire to emulate their doings. “Ah's a man o' peace, Ah is," he said, “An’ Ah’s tellin’ you true. Chief, if Ah sees a man wif a gun or pistol approachin’ me, Ah don' mek to remain to argify. No, Sir! Ah jus' says to mah feet. ‘The Lord put you on mah laigs for to run, an' now you obey the Lord.' "

On the other hand, his Chief's enthusiasm was ecstatic. His heart sang and his mind thrilled to the names and the deeds of the buccaneer: "Strange incomprehensible, quixotic men, these reckless buccaneers. Cruel, relentless, unprincipled, and yet with their own inexorable laws, their own code of honour, their streak of gallantry and their bravery which, despite their sins and their wickedness, we cannot but admire . . .  we must not judge them by modern standards. In their days piracy was a profession rather than a crime, and, while openly frowned upon by the powers, privately abetted and encouraged. To us these men appear bloodthirsty monsters, but we must bear in mind that in their day life was cheap and torture was legalised as a punishment for the most trivial crimes. Such pleasantries as burning holes through liars' tongues, cutting off eaves-droppers’ ears, branding the palms of thieves' hands, or putting out eyes were in the same category as ten days’ imprisonment or ten dollars' fine to-day. . .In the days when the Virgins were a haven for pirates the bodies of men hanging in chains and surrounded by carrion crows were almost an essential part of the waterside landscape in all seaports, and attracted no more attention than an illuminated advertisement on Broadway does at the present time."

They were essentially of their hour—and what characters to conjure with: "Fifteen men on the Dead Man’s Chest—Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"

Blackbeard, or, Old Teach; "Of immense size and coarse and brutal aspect, Teach nurtured a huge black beard which covered his ugly face to his eyes, and which, falling to his waist, was braided into innumerable small pigtails, the ends being tied together over his ears. His hair, also of inky hue, fell to his shoulders, and almost met his beetling, bushy black eyebrows over his forehead. As though not ferocious-looking enough naturally, he was accustomed, when making an attack, to stick burning slow-matches in his hair and beard which surrounded his fierce face and gleaming eyes with a ring of fire and smoke, and, according to a contemporaneous description, 'glowed most horribly.'" Add to this fourteen wives and a fighting death while he held his "all but decapitated head in place with one hand" and pulled pistol-trigger with the other, and what picture could be more completely satisfactory?

Then the much-maligned Captain Kidd, victim of a “frame up"; the "sparkish" Prince Rupert of the Rhine, who turned from privateering to piracy, only to die in his bed, at Spring Gardens; Red Legs, the moral "pirate who scuttled ships and sacked towns, but was never known to harm a woman or torture or kill a prisoner; Bartholomew Sharp, "sea-artist and valiant commander," whose "Dangerous Voyage" included the crossing of that Bridge of the World, the Isthmus of Panama, a canoe-attack on the Spanish Fleet off Perico Island, and the ravaging of the western coast of South America; Major Stede Bonnet, a wealthy pillar of the Church in Barbadoes, who went adventuring, joined Blackbeard, and in due course was hanged at White Point, thus escaping finally from the nagging wife who had driven him to roving; George, Earl of Cumberland, Knight of the Garter, who "as privateer, always flaunted in his hat a claret-coloured diamond-studded glove given to him by Queen Elizabeth; Rock Brasiliano, who “had no good

behaviour or government over himself in his domestic or private affairs”; the “most esecrable scoundrel” Lolonais; William Parker, who took San Jerome by storm; and most remarkable of all, Henry Morgan, who, in a scant five years, scourged the Caribbean and the Spanish Main, was knighted, and became Lieutenant-Governor of Jamaica and whipper with scorpions—an unfitting reward for his astonishing attack on Panama, then so rich that it was called the Castle of Gold.

Their names are legion; many they "bereaved of life"; many were tortured, many butchered out of hand, hanged at the yard-arm or forced to walk the plank. They profited none but themselves, and that of course, they did handsomely. Their ways were co-operative; all shared according to plan. This was the method of it. The boatswain would get to work under the eye of the Captain. "Dumping a chest of coins upon a sheet of tarry canvas, this fellow would count them out in piles, one for each man, and to every coin he tossed on the piles for the crew he would throw five upon that which formed the Captain's share. Pieces of eight crudely struck from silver bullion, dull-golden onzas, castellanos, doubloons, guineas, louis d'or, oddly shaped 'cross-money,’ in turn were divided. Then came ingots of gold and bars of silver, altar-pieces and chalices, dishes of beaten gold, jewelled girdles, rings and bracelets, necklaces of pearls and emeralds—a collection worth a king's ransom. And these, after the glowering chieftain had taken his pick, were gambled for by the tossing of coins or with dice, for so varied and miscellaneous, was the lot that to apportion the articles fairly was impossible. Last of all came the women…”

And note the value of the "dividends"; "Not infrequently a successful foray would result in so vast an amount of loot that when the prizes were divided even the common sailors would receive as much as five thousand pieces of eight. . . The purchasing power of such a sum was then equivalent to about a quarter of a million (dollars) at the prevent time."

With such "easy money" to be had for the boarding and sinking, it seems almost uncanny that the pirates should have thought it necessary to "insure" themselves before sailing but they did! Having decided that "No prey, no pay" was to be the rule they proceeded to the drawing up of a schedule of compensations for injuries.

Such are a few of the unusual "points" resulting from Mr. Hyatt Verrill’s cruise in the wake of the buccaneers. There are a fascinating number of others.

How many know the origin of the term "buccaneer"? Here it is. "One of the principal articles of food and of sport was the smoke-dried flesh of cattle and hogs, a product peculiar to Hispaniola and the neighbouring islands, and known by the Carib name of boucan or bucan. Tortuga, with limited agricultural resources but innumerable wild animals, was particularly well adapted to the bucanning industry, and a very large proportion of the settlers devoted virtually all their time to hunting and curing meat. As a result, the inhabitants soon became known as boucaniers, bucaneers, or buccaneers, a name which was to become famous throughout the world. The original significance of 'buccaneer' was wholly lost, and, becoming synonymous with 'pirate,' it was destined to carry terror to the hearts of Spaniards far and near."

Few, also, can be aware of Saba, neighbour of St. Eustatius, and "jutting from the tumbling sea for nearly three thousand feet—the most remarkable island, the most topsy-turvy, as bit of land in all the seven seas. . . Viewing the island from the sea, one would scarcely dream that a human being dwelt upon this mid-sea pinnacle, but a thousand feet above the water, snugly hidden in an extinct crater as though dropped from the clouds, is a delightfully neat, pretty, and typical Dutch village. . . A flight of roughly hewn stone steps leads upwards towards the clouds . . . eight hundred steps," and everything and everybody has to pass up them, even the wood for the fashioning of the boats, which have to be let down the sides of the cliffs by the builders, "exactly as though their island were a ship and they were lowering their craft from the davits."

Then there are Nevis, once the world's most famous Spa, where "Horatio Nelson, Esq., Captain of H.M.S. Boreas," wedded "Frances Herbert Nisbet, widow"; the "drowned city" which was the capital of Jamestown; a few miles beyond Puerto Plata, the site of Isabella, the first European settlement in the New World, which Columbus believed to be a great gold-mining centre; the golden altar of San José, hidden from Morgan by a coat of white paint; and many another Romance.

Never in her old age could the Vigilant—pirate-ship, privateer, slaver, man-o'-war—have sailed more blithely than when our author sent her adventuring again; seldom can author have reaped richer harvest of the seas. "In the Wake of the Buccaneers" is vastly entertaining, a Skeltery of Skelteries—and all the tuppenny-colouring is true! How Claud Lovat Fraser would have revelled in illustrating it! E. H. G.

 

“The piece of eight was the granddaddy of our own American dollar. This famous coin (still very common and known as the 'Spanish dollar’) was a silver piece with a value of 4 pesetas or 8 reales. Roughly, a real was worth 12½ cents, or 1-100th of a doubloon." A piece of eight was thus worth about 1 dollar, and a doubloon, 12½ dollars. The onza, or double doubloon of 200 reales or 100 pesetas, was equivalent to about 25 dollars. "Cross-money" was a curious fractional currency consisting of slugs of various sizes cut from pieces of eight and so hammered as to obliterate the inscriptions except the cross-like part of the Spanish coat-of-arms.”

Photographs from "In the Wake of the Buccaneers," by A. Hyatt Verrill. By Courtesy of the Publisher, Leonard Parsons.

 *"In the Wake of the Buccaneers" by A. Hyatt Verrill. Illustrated with Drawings and Photographs by the Author, and Rare Old Engravings. (Leonard Parsons: 21s. net.)