"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.
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