A Boys Museum 4

A Boy's Museum Part IV. The Insect Collection.

Popular Science Department

A Department of Interest to Young and Old

Edited and Illustrated by Professor A. Hyatt Verrill

The American Boy magazine, May 1910. Digitized by Doug Frizzle December 2011.

WITH the first warm breath of spring the multitude of insects will commence to stir and soon a number of kinds will be visible to the stroller through woods and pastures. Insects of many kinds are very particular as to the season of the year when they appear and hence, to have anything like a complete collection, you must be ready to collect them at any and all times. During the early spring many beetles, wasps, bees and flies are very common, which later on in the summer will disappear entirely. Moths and butterflies, however, are few during the spring but increase in numbers with the advance of warm weather. Insects as a whole are a most important group, for among them are found some of the most injurious as well as the most beneficial of creatures.

You will be greatly surprised to find what an infinite variety of insects you can obtain, even in a small district, or in a city and the more you collect and examine them and the better you understand their odd and interesting ways, lives and habits, the more you will wonder and the more interested you will become.

For collecting insects you will require comparatively few tools or implements, and these are all easily made at home or may be bought at trifling cost.

The things required for collecting are as follows: A good insect net, a small trowel, a pair of forceps, a stout, strong-bladed knife, cyanide bottles, some empty tin boxes (old tobacco boxes are good), a tin box with perforated cover, a lot of square pieces of smooth, rather stiff paper.

The net should be of stout, thin cloth, or bobinet, and should be at least ten inches in diameter and eighteen inches deep. The hoop can be easily made of stiff iron or brass wire bent as shown in Fig. 1. The two ends A,A, should be placed in a tin or brass ferrule (which has been previously stuffed half full of sand), and melted lead poured around the ends. The bag of the net can then be sewed on to the hoop, a handle fitted to the ferrule, and all is ready. Any old garden trowel and an old jackknife will do for these tools; the cyanide bottles have been described in a previous article; the tin boxes should be of various sizes and the one with perforated cover should be quite large and roomy, as it is intended to hold live caterpillars. The square pieces of paper should be of assorted sizes and these are intended to hold freshly killed butterflies and moths. To use these papers they should be folded as shown in Fig. 2, and the butterfly placed within as in Fig. 3 and the edges folded over as in Fig. 4. The papers with contained specimens are then placed in your tin boxes and are safe until ready to mount. In addition to these, a small phial of benzine or gasolene and a small bottle of 40% alcohol (wood alcohol will do) should be carried. It is often easier to kill insects, (especially butterflies in a net), with benzine than by cyanide bottles and many kinds such as wasps, beetles, ants, etc., are more easily preserved in alcohol than any other way until needed for mounting. Formaline is better than alcohol, as the colors of the insects are not so likely to fade, but if only kept in the bottle temporarily there is little trouble on this score. It is always a good plan to carry one or two small boxes and a bottle of alcohol or formaline with you in the woods, whether hunting for insects or other things, for oftentimes one comes across rare or interesting things at most unexpected times.

In order to succeed as an insect hunter you must learn the haunts and habits of each kind of insect and must know just the likely sort of places to hunt in; the flowers and trees that the larvae or adults live on, and the localities most favored by each kind. Beetles are easy to collect as they are usually rather helpless and only a few species, such as the Tiger beetles, take flight when alarmed. Under rocks and stones, in decayed wood and under old bark and logs are the best places to hunt for the various beetles. Some species, such as the boring beetles, (Fig. 5), feed on the flowers of wayside plants, and milkweed, golden rod, asters and burdock are excellent places to collect many species of these honey-loving beetles. Others feed on decayed fruit and by placing old apples, pears, etc., in certain spots you may reap quite a harvest of beetles, flies, wasps, bees and many butterflies. The ground beetles mostly live under stones and old logs and it is really lots of fun turning over such things in the woods and finding what a variety of creatures live concealed under these objects Many beetles live in decayed, or partly dead, wood and here you can use the old knife and the trowel to great advantage. In such places you will also find many species of boring larvae and although these are very difficult to raise to maturity they should be preserved as illustrating the general appearance and habits of these creatures. If possible try to cut out a section of some old dead tree or limb that you find riddled with borers' holes. This will make an interesting exhibit in your museum and the beetles and larvae (after preparation and mounting) should be placed in their natural attitudes and positions in the wood. Formerly the large museums avoided all natural styles of mounting and preparation but nowadays they strive to make their birds, animals, insects, etc., look as natural as possible and instead of mounting them singly on stiff, painted stands, they are mounted in groups among all their natural surroundings and accessories. It is, therefore, a good plan to make notes of the surroundings and situations where the specimen is obtained so that later on you can duplicate it as nearly as possible in your museum.

Although most insects, with the exception of wasps and bees, are harmless, it is always a good plan to handle any doubtful thing with forceps; moreover, by doing this they are less likely to be injured or broken.

Many fine, rare specimens of beetles, wasps and flies may also be obtained by "sugaring." This is done in two ways. One is to make a thick, syrup-like mixture of sugar, molasses, vinegar and water and paint it on tree trunks in woods and orchards. The other method is to use a thinner mixture and hang bottles and jars half-filled with the mixture in various places in the woods. By visiting the coated trees at night with a lantern a great number of fine things may be obtained and many night-flying moths are only secured in this way. The jars will catch many beetles, wasps, flies, etc., but moths that get in them are usually ruined. All specimens caught in the jars should be thoroughly cleaned in fresh water before mounting or drying. Of course in the case of the sugared trees a net must be used to catch the insects hovering about. By placing a bright light in the woods many insects will be attracted and can be readily captured, while a bright light in an open window will attract great numbers of insects on summer nights. Another good place to get beetle specimens is on the shores of the sea or large lakes. Many species fly out over the water until through fatigue they drop down and are drowned and are subsequently washed up among the flotsam and jetsam of the shores. I have taken many rare beetles in this way that I have never obtained elsewhere. Butterflies are found mainly in open fields and pastures and about flowers, but many kinds always hover over mud puddles or swamps, while other kinds are easily attracted to within reach by rotting fruit or decaying meat. Butterflies should be caught by the net and although this sounds easy you will be surprised to find how often you miss one. Approach carefully, make a quick, sharp side sweep with the net and at once turn the handle sharply so as to fold the bag of the net on itself, thus imprisoning the butterfly. The net should then be gathered carefully up and the butterfly grasped firmly between the thumb and finger. A slight pressure on the body at base of wings will render him unconscious and he can then be removed from the net and either dropped in a cyanide bottle or killed with a drop of benzine. It is often a good plan to kill with benzine before removing him from the net. No matter which method you follow, the specimen should be at once placed in the folded paper with wings folded carefully and you should be very particular to see that there are no folds or creases in the wings when placing him in the paper.

Caterpillars are a very important thing to look for and collect, for by rearing these you may secure absolutely perfect specimens of many moths and butterflies that are difficult to obtain in any other way. When a caterpillar is secured he should be placed in the perforated-covered box with some of the leaves of the plant on which he was found. When you get home the leaves should be placed in a bottle of water, paper or cotton stuffed in around the stems, and the whole placed in a breeding cage with the caterpillar. The breeding cage may be merely a box with thin cloth or wire netting cover or it may be made quite elaborate with growing plants, earth floor, etc. For single caterpillars a flower pot covered with a wire fly cover,—such as is used for covering cake,—may be used. If you are keeping a number of caterpillars together you should have the leaves that each feeds on in the cage and these leaves should be changed daily. You will find that a healthy caterpillar devours an immense amount of foliage but you should aim to always keep enough on hand to satisfy their appetites with some to spare and all dead or wilted leaves should be thrown away each day. Give the larvae plenty of fresh air, light and food and provide a pot or box of earth if they are of the kind which pupates in the ground. Handle your larvae as little as possible and after the pupae, or cocoons, are made do not disturb them in any way until they hatch out. The moths or butterflies will be very soft and juicy when they first come out, but you should wait until they are fully expanded and dry before killing and preserving them. Moths should be taken out and killed in the daytime and butterflies at night, for at these times each is sluggish and inclined to rest quietly.

In preparing your specimens you will require a few tools and other appliances, but all are cheap or easily made. Insect pins of several sizes are important, but as these cost only a few cents for a paper of one thousand, the item is small. Mounting boards are also very essential and these should be made as shown in Fig. 6. If you can not obtain sheet cork you can use pieces cut from old bottle corks or a strip of corrugated pasteboard, such as is used for mailing pictures. The mounting boards should be of several widths to accommodate insects of all sizes. In preparing beetles, moths, butterflies and other hard-bodied insects these are all that is required except some long slender needles mounted in sticks for handles, a few bits of smooth, thin cardboard,—old visiting cards are good,—and your forceps. For preparing caterpillars you will need an oven, a pair of fine scissors and some straws. The oven (illustrated in Fig. 7) is easily made from tin, but joints should not be soldered as they will soon melt apart when in use. To prepare a moth or butterfly, hold the specimen firmly by the sides of body, press a pin down through the thorax (the hardest part of body back of head to which wings are attached) allowing a little over one-half of pin to project below the body. Pin the insect in the groove of a mounting board so that top of body is level with the two sides. Then with a needle point press the wings down on the board, spread them into a natural position and pin them temporarily with fine pins inserted close to, or through, the large vein or rib at edge of wing. Proceed in the same way with the wings on the other side and be sure that the wings are exactly even and spread alike on both sides. Now take some strips of cardboard a little longer than wings are wide and lay them carefully across wings as In Fig. 8. Pin these down outside of edges of wings with common pins. Lift up and spread the antennae or feelers and secure them with another strip of card and if possible lift and spread at least one pair of the legs. Your specimen should now be set away in a safe place to dry. If the insect has been kept some time after killing he will be quite dry and stiff and must be softened before mounting. To do this a box of wet sand or sawdust to which a few drops of oil of cloves or formaline has been added should be ready. Place a sheet of clean paper over the sand or sawdust and place your dry insects on this. Cover them tightly and in a few hours you will find they are soft enough to mount. Wasps, bees and flies are mounted in the same way as the moths and butterflies but beetles,—if to be mounted in boxes merely as specimens,—should be pinned through one side of the body back of the thorax, Fig. 9). If they are to be mounted in groups or in natural attitudes, the pins should be placed along the sides and should not be run through the specimen at all. Beetles do not require a mounting board for wings, but the legs should be spread in a lifelike position. In preparing caterpillars quite a little skill and practice are required. Place your specimen on a piece of clean blotting paper, make a small incision between the two hind legs with the scissors (Fig. 10), and then with another blotter press firmly on the caterpillar, working from head backwards until all the contents of body are expelled. The oven should now be placed on a small stove or over a lamp until quite hot. Now place a straw in the incision in your caterpillar and blow gently until the body fills out plump and naturally. Now place the caterpillar within the oven through the round opening and blow gently and turn about until he becomes perfectly dry and stiff, watching the process through the glass top. He should then be placed on soft cotton in a safe spot for future use.

In placing your specimens on exhibition you can use a number of different methods. Moths, butterflies, beetles, etc., may be merely pinned in trays or glass-covered boxes with cork bottoms and each specimen numbered and labeled on a slip through which pin is passed, or they may be arranged in independent glass-covered mounts either in a plain, mounted position or arranged with dried and pressed flowers and leaves, Fig. 11. This style of mounting may also be used to good advantage with the dried larvae and very attractive mounts may be made by mounting the adult insect, the larvae and the pupa together in a glass-covered box with leaves and flowers. The best mounts for this purpose are known as the "Riker Mounts" and are very cheap, but they can be made by any boy with some old pasteboard boxes, some soft, smooth cotton and some old glass. The box is filled with layers of smooth cotton, the specimen laid carefully on it and the glass cover pressed firmly down over all and fastened in place by gummed strips of paper around the edges. This method prevents ravages of moths, allows the specimens to be examined carefully and freely handled and keeps them free from dust or injury. Oftentimes a moth or butterfly exhibits very different appearances on the upper and lower sides of wings and in such cases it is well to mount two specimens together,—one right side and the other wrong side up as shown in Fig. 12.

The People Who Eat Alone

This article is believed to be roughly equivalent to parts 5 and 6 of ‘In Unknown Guiana’ but published three years before them. We have never been able to locate part 6; it may never have been published. Part 5 is here, in text form. The two illustrations are oil paintings by Verrill; we hope they are Carib Natives! Since the original article was not illustrated, we have added them./drf

The People Who "Eat Alone."*

By A. Hyatt Verrill.

From The Daily Chronicle Christmas Annual, 1916. Georgetown, British Guiana. Digitized by Doug Frizzle, December 2011.

A narrow lane of brown and tranquil river with its glassy surface broken by innumerable tacubas, their gaunt water-worn trunks and branches standing sharply forth like half submerged skeletons of prehistoric monsters, and on either hand, the towering walls of giant forest trees rearing their dense canopy of foliage, tangled rope-like vines and vivid flowers a hundred feet and more above their mirrored counterparts.

Such was the scene upon which I looked as my fragile woodskin sped swiftly and silently down the upper Barama to the steady strokes of my Indians' paddles.

Suddenly, through the silence of the vast wilderness, came a faint, far away sound; a rythmatic, pulsating beat. Instantly the flashing strokes of the paddles ceased, and we rested motionless, listening with eager ears, for the sound, though so thin and dim that it seemed felt rather than heard, was unmistakable,—the measured boom of an Indian drum. And, as once more the throbbing noise was borne to us on the bosom of the forest bordered river, my pulses quickened, for there is something indescribably wild, something that savors of primitive savage man, of cannibal feasts and weird orgies in the sound of an Indian tom-tom quivering through the still and humid air of a tropic jungle.

Then, as the paddles dipped once more and the woodskin leaped forward, the centuries seemed swept away and in my mind I saw another boat upon the river in the wilderness, a boat filled with mail-clad men whose faces blanched at the booming drum beats and who with muttered curses, urged their Indian slaves to greater efforts, and crossing themselves prayed that they might escape from the accursed spot ere twas too late. And good cause had those voyagers of old to fear for their lives, for they were in the heart of the Carib country, the district inhabited by that once implacable, unconquerable, indomitable race the mere mention of whose name brought terror to the heart of red man or white, the one tribe to defy the armed intruders from over seas; the tribe to whom bloodshed and battle were as the breath of life; who feasted upon the bodies of their vanquished and who gave the word "cannibal" to our language. But unlike those mail-clad men of centuries past I was hurrying towards the sound of the Carib drum, for there was nothing to fear, the Caribs' warlike ways have long since been forgotten and the tom-tom called the tribesmen to a festive dance instead of to a ghastly cannibal feast.

I had long wanted to visit the Caribs of Guiana for I had dwelt among the Caribs of Dominica,—the last survivors of the race in the Antilles,—and I was most anxious to study the resemblances and differences between the two tribes.

By a long and no means easy journey I had reached the upper waters of the Barama; but the 140 miles of sea in the ill-found, wallowing apology for a steamer; the 36 hours spent bucking the Barima in a noisy kerosene launch where sleep was impossible; the 30 odd miles of jungle road through torrential downpours with shelterless nights in the bush, these were but incidentals and all hardships and discomforts were forgotten as the dull resonant throb of the Carib drum reverberated louder and louder while we swept towards the half-hidden entrance to a narrow-creek.

In a moment the river was lost to view, and rounding a bend of the creek, the woodskin was run gently upon the muddy shore beside a dozen others of its kind.

Up from the landing place a gigantic fallen tree trunk formed a natural bridge and pathway to the summit of the bank, and, in single file, we picked our way along the slippery tacuba and entered a narrow winding trail through the forest.

Ever louder boomed the drum as we proceeded and presently, emerging from the woods, we came forth upon a good sized clearing within which stood half a dozen thatched benabs. I had reached the Carib camp, had come unannounced and unbidden to the merry making, and I gazed about with interest at the scene to which good fortune had led me.

Close at hand stood a neatly wattled hut, adjoining it was a large open benab and in its shelter, standing about, reclining in hammocks or squatting on low wooden stools, were a score or more of women. Some were naked,—save for their blue laps, or loin cloths,—others wore a single baglike garment suspended by a string about the neck and exposing shoulders and breast, but all were arrayed in barbaric finery and gay with paint and colour. All wore their glossy blue-black hair coiled in neat braids above their napes and decorated with innumerable scarlet streamers; all had arms and legs tightly bound with woven ornamental bands of cotton; all wore immense necklaces of beads, teeth and seeds; all had faces painted in strange designs of scarlet and black and all wore a tuft of white vulture down upon their foreheads,—the tribal mark of the true Carib.

A few yards away, beneath another thatched benab, were the men,—splendidly muscled, beautifully proportioned, clean-limbed and physically as perfect as statutes of bronze, —clad only in their long, befringed, embroidered and beaded laps; but one and all with hideously painted faces and their long forelocks of hair covered with the snowy vulture down, the symbol of their race.

At the entrance to the men's benab a tall Carib was seated, holding, between his knees, a drum of cedar and babboon hide upon which he beat the monotonous rythm of the wahnoo dance with jaguar bones for drumsticks.

Close by, stood two great troughs of Paiwarrie and ever back and forth between these and the men and women passed a young and comely maiden with her face curiously adorned with scarlet, the "Paiwarrie Governor," whose duty is to keep the drinkers' calabashes constantly filled with the vile liquor.

It was by merest chance I had come upon the camp during a paiwarrie spree, when, from far and near, the Caribs had foregathered for the dance, and by this good luck I had obtained an exceptional opportunity to see the Caribs when all restraint was thrown aside.

* A Chapter from Mr. Verrill's forthcoming book "Among the Indians of the Guiana Wilderness." It is to obtain photographs and material for this work that the author is now visiting the Colony.

With true Indian stoicism the Caribs showed no surprise at my arrival on the scene, and, seating myself in an empty hammock, I took the proffered calabash of Paiwarrie, for he who would win the confidence of the red men and would obtain an insight of their lives and ways must perforce do as they do in as far as possible. As yet the dance had not commenced and as I wandered at will among the people and explored their benabs I learned much of Carib life and ways. Soon we were on friendly terms; presents of tobacco, pipes, knives, mirrors, etc., serving to establish myself in their good graces and even old Komahrie,—the Peaiman and master of ceremonies,—unbent from his surly aloofness, and vowing I was his brother, posed for his portrait, and then, leading me to his benab, furnished me with a vocabulary and other information of the greatest value, besides disposing of his choicest possessions to add to my collection.

Meantime the drinking was continuing without cessation, but much to my surprise, there were no signs of intoxication, although the Indians had consumed enormous quantities of the sour, ill-smelling concoction. The only visible effect of the liquor was to produce a lethargic, listless, dull condition, the men and women lying or sitting motionless and silent, but with no signs of drowsiness, and apparently wrapped in the most serious and profound thoughts, and often so inert that they would not trouble to lift the drink to their lips, but opening their mouths, waited for the serving maid to pour the liquor down their throats.

In a short time, however, the Paiwarrie commenced to act as a cathartic and emetic, but there was nothing of the nauseating filthy orgy of which I had heard; the people discreetly retiring to the bush, to return and continue drinking, as before.

In an hour or two after my arrival the Paiwarrie began to exert its secondary effect; the lethargic morose attitude of the Caribs gave way to laughter and gaiety, they chattered and sang, the droning boom of the drum became a lively tattoo, rude fiddle-like instruments squeaked, bone flutes added their shrill notes to the barbaric discord, and the boys and girls commenced to prance about, turning and twisting, stamping their feet, and stepping high in time with the drum beats.

Soon the men joined the dance, always in couples, and, casting aside their single garments, the women followed in rapid succession. Each sex, however, formed a separate group, the women and girls dancing on the smooth open space before their benab and the men occupying a similar space before their shelter, while the boys dashed about, here there and everywhere, shaking calabash rattles and yelling like fiends.

No doubt there were definite steps and figures to the dance and these unquestionably had their symbolic meanings for the "spree" was held to celebrate the end of the period of mourning for a deceased member of the tribe and the desertion of the field wherein she had been buried. But only a Carib could have interpreted the meaning of the intricate movements and the gyrations of the dance or the significance of the various forms of ceremonial clubs wielded by the men. To civilized eyes it appeared a confused jumble of leaping, prancing, naked bronze figures; a kaleidoscopic whirl of colour and a deafening din of yells, shouts, the piercing sound of flutes, the thumping of wooden clubs, the stamp and shuffle of bare feet and the whirl of rattles, the whole punctuated and impelled by the resonant hollow boom of the drum.

For a time I watched,—an interested spectator, and taking photographs as opportunity offered; but as Paiwarrie was constantly pressed upon me and I had no desire either to drink more or to offend the Indians by refusals, and as there was nothing more to be accomplished, I prepared to leave the dancing half-drunken throng to themselves.

But my "civilized" Carib boatmen could not be coaxed, cajoled or threatened into leaving,—such an event as a Paiwarrie spree did not fall to their lot every day and they were determined to make the most of their opportunity. Luckily one of my men was of another tribe, and being unfamiliar with the Carib tongue, found himself a mere wall flower. With him and my trusty black Sam I slipped away unnoticed, and embarking in my woodskin, headed for the open river and our camp.

As we paddled up stream in the waning light, the distant boom of the drum was borne to us on the breeze and far into the night the faint, far away reverberations told us that hilarity still reigned among the Caribs.

Much of interest was obtained among these Caribs of the upper Barama and much additional and valuable data was secured from other Caribs, both before and after my first participation in a Paiwarrie feast.

That they are very different from all other Guiana Indians is evident, but who they are, whence they came and what their relationship with the other tribes, are problems which have long puzzled ethnologists and are still unsolved.

Of the same stocky build as the other aborigines, yet the Caribs differ markedly in features, proportions and physical characteristics and are still more distinct in habits, traditions, language, weapons and customs. Thus, among all the other British Guiana tribes, the women wear aprons or queyus of beads, whereas, the Carib women never use queyus, but adhere to plain cloth laps or loin cloths, while the laps of the men, instead of being of plain cloth devoid of decoration, are fringed, ornamented with strips of coloured cloth and braid and are often beaded.

In place of the tattooing, so common among the Akawoias, Patamonas, Arekunas and other tribes, the Caribs use pigments or paints, exclusively and, moreover, the painted designs on their faces have no significance as charms or beenas,—as do the tattoo marks of their neighbours,—but are merely ornamental.

Feather crowns and mantles also are unknown among the Caribs, the only feathers used for decorative purposes being the soft white down of the King Vulture which, gummed to the foreheads of the women or to the forelocks of the men, constitutes the tribal mark or emblem of the race. In order to afford a spot for attaching this down the Carib men wear a long lock of hair, extending from the centre of the head above the ears to the forehead, the rest of the hair being clipped short; So inherent and deep seated is this ancient custom that even the civilized Caribs of the riverside towns cut their hair in the same manner, although they have not the remotest idea as to why they do so.

In their necklaces and other adornments the Caribs also differ materially from other tribes, the women wearing immense necklaces of beads consisting of innumerable strings held together by polished rings cut from palm nuts, while ankles and limbs are tightly bound with fringed cotton bands woven in place and which cannot be removed without cutting.

Like nearly all the other Indians, the Caribs have their ears pierced, but in addition, the women have the lower lip perforated and in the aperture carry one or more pins, which are used to extract jiggers from the feet. The women are adept at removing these pins and reinserting them with the tip of the tongue and it is almost fascinating to watch the pins appear and disappear from the lip without apparent cause. But the strangest feature of this custom of carrying pins in the lip lies in the fact that it exists among no other British Guiana Indians with the exception of the Macusis and their related tribes of southern Guiana, and as these people also use white down on their foreheads on festive occasions there is little doubt that they are of Carib stock, although so widely separated geographically and so totally distinct in many other ways.

The weapons of the Caribs are also very different from those of the other British Guiana Indians. The bows are, as a rule, very crude and primitive, but some are well made and these differ from the bows of the Arekunas, Patamonas and other races in their form and size, as well as in the depth of the groove along the back.

The Caribs arrows, however, are much superior to those of most other tribes and are usually shorter, while, in addition to bows and arrows, the Caribs employ long throwing lances or javelins for hunting large game, as well as true harpoons for capturing large fish. Blow pipes and poisoned darts are unknown among the Caribs,—save where Ackawoias have intermarried with them, but they make ceremonial clubs of many different types and which are often of immense size and weight.

In their domestic arts and crafts the Caribs are very primitive, their basketry being inferior to that of other Indians, their wooden stools rough and crude, their earthenware poorly made and their hammocks of inferior grade; but their water calabashes are well designed and neatly stoppered, their drums are marvels of ingenuity and patience and their strange fiddles,—made from the hollow limbs of the trumpet tree or "Gunga pump,"—are very cleverly designed and are far from unmusical.

As might be expected of a race whose ancestors for countless centuries lived by the sword, figuratively speaking, the Caribs are less inclined to pastoral and agricultural pursuits than the other Guiana tribes, but they are adept fishermen, splendid hunters and unexcelled boatmen. These inherited characteristics of their warlike, nomadic forbears tend to make them lazy and improvident however, and, compared with the Arekunas, Macusis or even the Patamonas, they are miserably poor,—if indeed we can consider any one poor whose every want is supplied by nature and who has no ambitions or desires other than to live an uneventful, easy existence with as little effort as possible. Whereas the benabs of the other Indians are usually well supplied with baskets for various purposes, several spare hammocks, numerous cooking utensils, an ample assortment of bows and arrows, often times a gun, great balls of spun cotton and baskets of raw cotton; the houses of the Caribs usually contain but the barest necessities. Few own guns, more than a single bow with its set of arrows is rarely seen, the baskets are usually few and show signs of long hard usage, a single earthen pot or a battered pail is the ordinary extent of cooking utensils and the hammocks are smoke-browned with age and patched and repaired in innumerable places.

But despite their lack of industry and their poverty, the Caribs are intelligent, honest, scrupuously neat and cleanly in habits and, when beyond the sphere of influence of civilized man, strictly moral according to their own tenets. Indeed, the cleanliness of their villages and persons is most striking and the satin-like smoothness of their skins is in sharp contrast to the scarred and scratched bodies of many other tribes and speaks eloquently of their physical condition and personal habits. No doubt this is partly due to the fact that the women constantly wear the loose bag-like frocks peculiar to their tribe when in the bush, for they state that this is donned to protect their skins from thorns, brush and insects; but the men go about nude save for their laps and their skins are also clean and free from sores, scars or blemishes.

In colour the Caribs average lighter than the other tribes, their skins ranging from a light golden-brown or dark olive to a reddish, coppery hue; the women as a rule being lighter coloured than the men and their faces, strangely enough, being often lighter than their bodies.. Their features are more regular and finer cut than the other Indians, their noses are often straight or even slightly aquiline, their lips fairly thin, their mouths small and their eyes seldom oblique or almond shaped and often hazel or tawny-brown colour. On the whole they are far less Oriental in appearance than the other tribes, many are decidedly Caucasian in features, there is a distinctly Semitic cast to their faces and, if dressed in civilized garments, they might readily pass for natives of southern and eastern Europe or Asia Minor.

In stature the Caribs average taller than the other tribes, the average height of 34 men being 5 ft. 6 inches and that of 33 women being 4 ft. 9 inches while one man was measured who stood 5 ft. 10 inches in height and the tallest woman seen was 5 ft. 3 inches.

The Carib language differs essentially from all other Guiana tongues and while the dialect of each tribe is distinct yet the differences are often so slight that very often a member of one tribe has no difficulty in conversing with members of another. Thus, the Arekunas and Ackowoias can understand each others tongue, but in the case of Carib it is different, for neither Arekuna nor Akowoia can speak or understand Carib (unless the knowledge is acquired) or vice versa. Indeed, there are scarcely a dozen Carib words which even remotely resemble the words having the same meaning in the tongues of the other tribes, although, certain words, such as "toona " (water), "oorapa" (bow) and "poorooua" (arrow) are common to several tribal tongues. This however, is to be expected for such words were of prime importance, and necessity compelled the various peoples to adopt universally understood names for the articles on which their lives depended.

To the student of ethnology the Caribs are perhaps the most interesting, as well as the most puzzling, tribe of northern South America for once their origin or relationship can be definitely established great light will be thrown upon the aborigines of the continent. It has been customary to consider the Caribs of the South American mainland and the Caribs of the Lesser Antilles as identical, the theory being that the insular aborigines were merely wanderers from the coast who, by stress of weather or by choice, had migrated to the islands that rim the Caribbean Sea. But with this theory I cannot fully agree for in many ways the two races are totally different. Putting aside the question of physical characteristics, which might easily be altered by environment, there are many important points to be considered.

Thus, the first Europeans to visit South America found the Indians using hammocks which, to the aborigine, is perhaps the most important of articles with the exception of his weapons, But the early voyagers make no mention of hammocks among the Indians of the Antilles and the few survivors of the insular Caribs never use hammocks and have no knowledge of their manufacture. To my mind it is inconceivable that an article of such ancient origin and so indespensible as the hammock should not have been carried by any Indians who strayed or migrated to the islands, for no South American Indian goes forth, even on a short journey, without his hammock.

Moreover, the bows and arrows used by the natives of the Caribbees were very different from those common to the Indians of the mainland, while the heavy wooden clubs of the latter are unknown to the insular Indians. Of course such clubs may have been in use before the advent of the whites (they are scarcely more than ceremonial among the Guiana tribes to-day) but Pere Labat and other early chroniclers make no mention of them or of the white down tribal marks, when describing the aborigines of the islands. As these early visitors to the West Indies described the Caribs and their ways quite fully and in detail, they could scarcely have failed to note such conspicuous characteristics of the natives had they existed. The fact that they were not mentioned is ample proof, to my mind, that they were unknown to the aboriginal inhabitants of the islands.

But perhaps the strongest argument against the theory that the islands were peopled by Caribs from South America is found in the canoes of the two races.

To navigate the stretch of open sea that separates Guiana from the Antilles would require seaworthy, staunch, large craft for while a stray canoe might be blown to sea and reach the islands in safety, still, in order to transport enough people to populate the islands, not one but many boats must have made the passage. Any one familiar with the light, fragile woodskins, or the narrow, cranky, dugout corials of the Guiana Indians will be skeptical of the latter's ability to migrate in numbers to the islands in such craft. Even granting that this occurred, what then became of these types of boats when the wave-tossed Indians reached a safe haven on the Leeward coasts of the Antilles?

One would suppose that having made the journey in corial or woodskin the Caribs, who are preeminently canoe Indians, would have continued to build similar craft for use in their new home. But such is not the case, for wood-skins are unknown in the Antilles and such dugouts as are used are peculiar to the Caribbean and are so totally distinct from all types of South American canoes that it is scarcely possible to conceive that they are merely evolutions from the corial type. And that these insular Caribs’ canoes are not of recent origin is proven by the records of the European discoverers who described the canoes of the island Caribs as precisely like those of the present day. Staunch, seaworthy, swift and often of enormous size, the canoes of the island Indians could easily have weathered the seas of the Atlantic or the Caribbean and with little danger could have reached the shores of South America in numbers. In fact it is my firm conviction that this is exactly what did occur and that instead of the South American Caribs migrating northward to the islands, the original Caribs were insular people and migrated southward to the mainland. There, finding a land of promise with forests teeming with game, rivers swarming with fish, and an abundance of inoffensive, timid, people on which to prey, the fierce wanderers established themselves, and finding no further use for the sea-going heavy boats in which they had reached their new home, they gradually abandoned the type in favour of the lighter craft of the Arowaks and Warraus which were adapted to river and creek navigation. This theory, too, would account for the hammocks, the white feather tribal emblem and the other peculiarities of the mainland Carib which are non-existant among the Caribs of the Antilles.

Thus, in the islands, where there were no indigenous poisonous snakes, no carnivorous animals, no swampy inundated ground and few insects dangerous to man, there would be no necessity for hammocks, or similar devices. So too, in the islands where all the inhabitants were of one race there would be no need of distinguishing tribal marks, even though the denizens of one island warred upon their next door neighbours. But once upon the mainland, conditions would be very different. Here, in a low land often inundated, where poisonous snakes were common, where prowling beasts abounded and where countless insect pests made sleeping on the earth dangerous, hammocks would be required and their advantage would quickly be grasped by the newcomers and the useful articles would be adopted for their own use. So too, in this land already inhabited and where the handful of warlike strangers was surrounded by hordes of other tribes, a distinctive mark of recognition was necessary. Why the white down of the King Vulture was selected is easy to guess, for this bird invariably flies alone and eats by itself while the common black vultures stand aloof, waiting until the King's appetite is glutted and he retires from his feast. And truly symbolical of the Caribs' ways is the mark they chose, for like the King Vulture, they were a race apart from the timid darker skinned natives; a race holding themselves aloof as superiors of the Warrau and the Arowak, as do their descendents of to-day: a people who "ate alone," for they had cannibal propensities and only the pickings they left from their forays or their hunts fell to the lot of their neighbours. To-day, the Warrau and the Arowak still looks upon his Carib neighbour as a superior being; to-day the Carib still looks down upon his fellow redmen and scorns to eat food touched or prepared by the Warrau, who, as of old stands aside while the Carib. "eats like the King Vulture," alone.

But whether or not the Caribs spread, from the islands to the mainland or vice versa, the question of their origin is yet unanswered.

Perchance, the ancient legend of Atlantis was no myth; the forest-clad volcanic peaks of the Antilles may be the last vestiges of that submerged land and the Caribs the descendents of its people. For aught we know, they may be of Phoenician or Mediterranean lineage, a race whose ancestors were carried by tempest or baffling winds across the wide Atlantic and who, unable to make headway back against the trade winds, settled on the fair islands of the west. Or again, they may be one of the lost tribes of Israel who, wandering westward along the African coast, were borne out to sea and found the New World, ages ere Columbus set forth upon his perilous quest.

There are equally good arguments for each theory and it is idle to speculate. The chances are the truth will never be known and that long after the last of the Caribs has passed into the great beyond the origin of the race will still remain as much a mystery as ever.

Suwannee Treasure Hunt

Going through the emails from Alan Schenker this was found. It is not by Hyatt Verrill nor does it tell us much about him but rather it furthers a chapter from his autobiography, Never a Dull Moment, ‘More Treasure Seekers’./drf

Suwannee Treasure Hunt

By John Maloney

The Saturday Evening Post, June 2, 1945, researched by Alan Schenker, digitized by Doug Frizzle, Dec. 2011.

The buried loot of the buccaneers has always been coupled with mystery, blood and tragedy —and this Florida hoard is no exception.

THERE'S a hole way down on the banks of the Suwannee River—fifteen miles above where it flows out of thick Florida swamps into the Gulf—down which men with treasure fever in their blood have poured more than $200,000 over a period of sixty years, always hoping for fabulous riches in return. Many persons have gambled everything they had in the search, and lost. Failure drove one man to suicide. Possession of the cache, when it seemed within reach, inspired attempted murders by poisonings, dynamiting, gun and knife fights. But through the years, quicksand has been victor in this more than half-century battle.

No one knows for a certainty who buried the treasure there, but evidence points to the pirate Jean Lafitte above all others. Old Navy and Treasury Department records confirm the fact that Fowler's Bluff, site of the hunt, was a popular hangout for freebooters when piracy was a lucrative and important New World business. Gasparilla hanged one of his mutinous followers there. Dreaded Black Caesar and Billy (Bowlegs) Rogers brought their ships to the Bluff to be careened, scraped and recalked while hiding from American and British patrol vessels. As to there being substantial treasure here, men who have studied every shred of evidence accumulated through three quarters of a century swear that anywhere from $1,000,000 to $15,000,000 in coins, gold bars, silverware and altar accouterments are held by these tenacious quicksands.

There is more than circumstantial evidence that a sizable fortune already has been removed from the pit. I recently have talked with old men who told me that, fifty years ago, they helped dig "something" out of a twenty-foot hole there under the live oak. That "something" ostensibly was later used to establish a Gainesville, Florida, bank, stock a large hardware store, build an office building and start a backwoods sawmill owner well toward being a millionaire in a surprisingly short time. But, to keep dates, testimony and events of many years straight, let's go back to 1888.

In March of that year, an elderly man who spoke with a Scandinavian or German accent appeared in the little village of Hardee Town—now Chiefland, Levy County, Florida—and made arrangements to rent a wagon and team of mules by the week. The day he acquired the wagon, a second man, dark and uncommunicative, joined the first. They bought picks and shovels, and drove off toward the river on the Fowler's Bluff road, a sandy trail through palmetto and blackjack scrub. A couple of months later, two Hardee Town boys passed by Fowler's Bluff while hunting, and raced back to town to tell how, when they came upon the two strangers digging in a deep pit, the dark one had vaulted over an accumulation of dirt, grabbed a rifle standing against a big live-oak tree, and ordered them away from the vicinity and to keep what they had seen to themselves.

Town loafers sat for a week debating about going out to the Bluff and discovering, by force if necessary, what the two strangers were doing. But before they talked themselves into action, the stranger who had first appeared drove into the settlement, bringing his companion, wrapped in a dirty old blanket and delirious with what was known locally as ''swamp fever," an earlier name for malaria. The sick man died that night, and the other stranger could not or would not give a name to be scratched on the unpainted pine board that became the dead man's headstone.

The remaining old man seemed to have become unbalanced over the loss of his pardner. He went around muttering something about an old map, dated 1823, which he possessed and which was very valuable. But Hardee Town folk were busy carving farm and cattle land out of heavily timbered forests, and had no time to listen to an old eccentric. No one in the town noticed when he left the region. Eighty-three-year-old Joe Curry, who remembered this incident well and who is a vital link in this whole strange story, described it to me in typical cracker language: "We paid him no mind, and the first thing we knowed, he wuz gone."

Nine years later, in 1897, an old man walked into a sawmill operated by Emmett Baird just across the Florida line in Georgia. He obviously was ill, and Orie Freeman, Baird's foreman, offered him a bed of shavings in a corner of the mill shed. The old man—who possessed a heavy accent—became more ill the next day and, without a doctor within call, mill hands diagnosed his sickness as pneumonia. It was on the evening before he died that, true to that affinity between deathbeds and buried treasure, the stranger gave a map and some detailed directions to Baird and Freeman in return for what they had done for him.

The old man, of course, was the eccentric who had been digging on Fowler's Bluff back in ‘88. No one living knows what he told Baird and Freeman, but, at any rate, it was enough to make them desert the sawmill and hasten to the Bluff. There they hired Joe Curry, who was living in the vicinity, along with George Higginbotham, to work for them, and swore them both to secrecy in the operation. Curry's wife was to rent sleeping quarters to Baird and Freeman and to serve meals to them and others who worked for them. Within a few days, because they were digging almost in his front yard, Curry was offered a share of whatever they found, in return for his work and for guarding the place day and night.

Curry, despite his eighty-three years, is still keeping a country store within a few miles of the Bluff, and his memory of what took place is still vivid, as is that of his wife. He handled the map frequently, and recalls that it seemed to be made of thick, handmade, oiled paper, that it clearly was a map of this particular bend in the Suwannee, and that three large live oaks shown on the map obviously marked the spot where Baird ordered digging begun. He also recalls that inked directions on the back of the map stated that the treasure, whatever it was, was buried in three separate spots immediately surrounding the three oaks.

From the start, Uncle Joe remembers, Baird was highly suspicious of anyone who came near the place and openly frightened by strangers who came close. Three steamboats made regular trips to upriver plantations and lumber camps. When they passed up the channel, which ran near the shore at this point, Baird made everyone keep out of sight and threw brush over sand removed from the pit to disguise it.

The place evidently wasn't healthy for Freeman. Mrs. Curry says he was in bed with swamp fever much of the three months they were digging. Meanwhile, a hole twelve feet deep had been opened up in the loose sand. They were just getting to quicksand when one of the men struck a hard object with his pick. The others were called out while Baird himself went down and, standing on a plank shelf that had been constructed to keep workers out of the quicksand, began prying around the object they had struck.

The Pirate's Curse

AS Baird pried, the object seemed to sink deeper and deeper into the almost fluid sand. Fearful that it would get beyond reach, he called Joe Curry to come down and help him estimate how large and heavy it was. Joe says that he was able to feel all around it, and to determine that it was encased in something like rough cement, and was about three feet, six inches long, two feet wide and one and one half feet thick.

There was high excitement on the Bluff at this discovery. When it was decided that the object could not be raised without additional tools, Baird had the men stand guard while he rushed back to Hardee Town—by that time called Chiefland—where a blacksmith fashioned a set of grappling tongs to hook around the box. A scaffold was erected over the excavation and Curry went down into the liquid sand with a rope tied around his middle and hooked the jaws of the grapple around the object. Then, with two mules hitched to the hoisting rope, Curry stood on top of it to keep it steady and gave the signal to hoist away. Slowly, the sand began yielding its hold with a sucking sound. All concerned, even Mrs. Curry, were standing on the brink waiting to see what they felt must be millions spilled before their eyes. Suddenly, however, the hoisting rope parted and Joe Curry and the treasure were both dropped with a splash into the pit. Joe barely managed to cling to the rough plank platform to avoid being sucked under by the quicksands. The box sank from sight.

Baird and Freeman were filled with almost frantic despair on losing what they visualized as certain wealth just when it seemed within their grasp. Curry had been thoroughly frightened by his experience, and, though not a man generally susceptible to local superstitions, he admits now that he thought some curse, pirate or otherwise, was protecting whatever was buried there. All this happened during the third week after Baird arrived at the Bluff, and Curry was anxious to drop his part of the partnership and get back to a paying job. At this point, Baird offered him ten dollars for his share of whatever was found, and the privilege of working on a daily basis, while Mrs. Curry was to continue boarding them. The offer was accepted on the spot.

A large crowbar revealed that the chest had sunk down to a fifteen-foot level and was at least temporarily resting there. Everyone set to work building a crude cofferdam around the hole, going down below the chest's level. Without adequate equipment for such a job, they had their difficulties. It was six more weeks before they had the cofferdam completed and had dipped up watery sand until the chest was less than two feet below sand-and-water level. Both Baird and Freeman were at a high state of excitement again. Freeman would get out of bed, wrapped in one of Mrs. Curry's quilts, and watch the operation from its brink. They would allow no one but Curry and old Bob, an elderly Negro Baird had brought with him, to approach the hole. Baird gave orders that no one was to wear light-colored shirts, because they could be spotted too easily by boats passing on the river.

About this time, Baird ordered Curry to cut a limestone block about the size of the chest they were after, and carve figures or letters on it which he had forgotten after fifty years. "Baird told me if we got the chest out, I was to throw the stone in and tell anyone who might come along later that it was what he found," he says now.

Finally, near the end of the eleventh week since they had started, Baird would allow only old Bob and Freeman, who had partially recovered from his fever, near the pit. One night they worked until after one o'clock, and when Baird came in, he dropped the remark in a casual way that he was going to quit. Then he went into Freeman's room where the two men talked for more than an hour in a low tone. At daylight, Baird had his wagon hitched, and before the sun was up he, Freeman and old Bob drove off with nothing but a most perfunctory leave. Shovels, picks, the grapple and all other equipment were left there. Curry says no one saw them drive through Chiefland on their way out, as they would have had to do, and now expresses his opinion that they waited somewhere in a near-by swamp until dark that night and drove out then to avoid questions.

Just what Baird got out of that hole there by the Suwannee probably will never be known, unless he left records that his descendants will not reveal or discuss today. But that he did get something—and something substantial, at that—most persons in North Florida believe firmly, and every evidence points to that conclusion. Exhibit No. 1 is the fact that a few days after Baird left the spot, Curry found, near the hole, part of an old lock and thin pieces of something that looked like concrete which plainly revealed impressions of hinges and metal bindings.

As Curry points out today, both Baird and Freeman—the latter seems to have faded out of the picture completely when he drove away from the Bluff with Baird—were anything but well-to-do, certainly not wealthy even by local standards; yet, just a short time later, Baird was able to establish a bank, stock the largest hardware store in Central Florida, and put up a large office building in Gainesville, seat of the state university, where his descendants still live. None of them today will discuss anything about buried treasure, and some of them have been pretty brusque with persons who did want to delve into the matter including the present owner of the site, who is fully aware that under Florida laws finders are keepers, and who has no desire for anything but information from them.

There is a persistent rumor in Chiefland and Gainesville that Baird brought the box—whatever it contained to a Gainesville bank, where his findings temporarily were stored in vaults. Dr. A. Hyatt Verrill, historian and author of half a dozen books on buried treasure, pirates and privateers, and who is presently to figure in a new Fowler's Bluff search, says he knows persons who have seen old coins still preserved by members of the family as souvenirs of Baird's find. I talked to half a dozen lawyers and businessmen in Gainesville who were all convinced that Baird struck it rich there on the edge of that swamp.

Curry moved away from the Bluff soon after Baird left. Occasional hunters and fishermen were its only visitors until 1902, when another stranger, who local persons think was a New Zealander, became a squatter on the site. He remodeled Curry’s old house with pieces of driftwood, seemed to live mostly on game but meanwhile was digging all over the place. On occasional visits to Chiefland he used old twenty-dollar gold pieces to pay for shotgun shells and food. Naturally, that was enough to start local speculation about treasure again. Several Chiefland men admit today that as boys they hid in palmetto thickets and spied on his digging, but never saw him strike anything. However, local belief that he had unearthed something was so strong that after the old man was found dead in bed—from obviously natural causes—his hut was taken down and searched plank by plank and the ground underneath was dug up, but nothing was found.

Treasure-hunting fever was heightened when fishermen digging worms for bait near the site came on what they believed a nest of petrified turtle eggs. One of the party idly had skipped all but one of the round pellets across the swiftly-flowing river when he accidentally dropped it. The "egg" cracked, to reveal a one-carat diamond in its center. Authorities on pirate and treasure lore pointed out that it frequently was the custom for ill-gotten jewels to be encased in mud and buried for future recovery. An Orlando lady today is wearing this only diamond that the flabbergasted fisherman did not throw away.

Belief that some spell hangs over the Bluff has been voiced from time to time. This was heightened in 1910 when a group of local treasure hunters dug into a spot thickly strewn with skeletons, all buried face down, with a covering of what had been Spanish moss more than a foot deep. The "spell" was not discredited when old-timers recalled that, long before Emmett Baird's search, a lumber camp had occupied the bank at this spot and that most of its workers had been wiped out by a smallpox epidemic. It was remembered then that, according to old custom, plague victims were always buried back up. But the finding of human bones put a stop to further local diggings.

Panthers, whose screams frequently echo through the Suwannee's thick swamps, wildcats and bald eagles, both found here in large numbers, held solitary sway over this wild region for the next thirteen years. Strangely enough, a hunt for gold and family heirlooms supposedly buried about ten miles away, not by pirates, but to keep them from Yankee marauders during Civil War days, indirectly led back to "Lafitte's hoard" and resulted in tens of thousands of dollars and thousands of man-hours being expended on Fowler's Bluff—an expenditure and a hunt that have been carried out, with only brief interludes, from 1923 to this day.

Practically every family down in the Suwannee country hid something from the Federals—even if it was only grandpap's good corn whisky that the Yankees liked so well. One of these Florida families in 1923 was trying to settle an estate, and some of its members declared they would not part with the land until great-grandpappy's gold and silver plate was found. Robert Mahon, possessor of a metal locator, was brought up from South Florida to have a stab at finding the cache. He found nothing for them, but stories of Baird's find and what might be left intrigued him. He went to the Bluff, walked around the site, and got vigorous and decisive indications that he was walking over metal in two spots about thirty feet apart—exactly as Joe Curry remembered the original map had indicated.

The Quicksands' Secret

HERBERT L. NELSON, a large property owner and real-estate broker at near-by Cedar Keys, had studied every available detail concerning previous searches and was virtually certain that whatever Baird found was only part of the original cache. Mahon's instrument wiped out any remaining doubt. He and his wife sold land and prepared to determine, once and for all, just what those quicksands were guarding so jealously. Mahon also put up a small amount of cash and took command of digging operations.

The map originally showed the deposits at least thirty feet inland from high-tide mark. Swamps at the Suwannee's headwaters in Georgia had been drained in later years and more streams were diverted into the river. This resulted in a larger stream that had washed away at the Bluff until the stumps of the old oaks were now touched by high tides. Recovery of anything buried there was thus made more difficult, since seepage through a narrow wall of sand had to be combated at each dip of the spades.

The first step in attempting to reach the object attracting Mahon's instrument was to sink a rough wooden cofferdam about the area to he excavated. Although the result was not entirely watertight, it did hold back the watery sand until they could go down at least five feet below water level before they had to halt operations for pumping and bailing. At this depth—which was thirteen feet from the top of the hole, since the Bluff was only eight feet high at this point—a Negro workman's shovel struck something solid and he let out an exultant yell. Nelson was so sure he had the treasure that he sent a messenger to Cedar Keys for his wife to assist in counting their new-found wealth. Before she arrived, the object started sinking, huge bubbles arising as it went deeper and deeper into the quicksands.

In desperation, Nelson hurried to Chiefland and bought from a well driller several dozen twenty-foot lengths of one-and-one-half-inch piping. With these they attempted to form a sort of basket under the box by driving the piping in at a slanting angle from all sides. They were too late to prevent the sinking. As near as they could tell, the box finally came to rest on a brittle limestone layer twelve to fourteen feet under the top stratum of quicksand.

Nelson went to the United States Army Engineers' district office at Jacksonville with rough diagrams of the sand, water and rock strata that seemed to be defeating him, and asked their advice. One of the engineers became so interested that he obtained leave from the Army and went back to the Bluff to take charge of the engineering. His immediate decision was to construct a still larger cofferdam, install pumps of more capacity than heretofore used to overcome sand and water seepage. For nine weeks, using crews brought down from Jacksonville, they worked in twelve-hour shifts to get boilers and pumps installed around the box's known location. Then, just a few days before they were ready to start the pumps and suck the cofferdam dry, the river started rising from upriver cloudbursts and did not stop until the entire Bluff was covered with water for the first time in known history. When the waters receded, the equipment that was left was silt-covered to a depth of several feet. The curse seemed to be at work again.

Nelson's money was gone. His determination to get that treasure, however, was not washed away by the swamp water. Many of his friends in Florida had become interested in the project and he formed a twelve-man company to carry on. Flood damage was repaired, new machinery installed, and divers were hired to supervise cleaning out the cofferdam that had been completed just before the high water arrived. Another engineer from the Army joined the first, and when the dam was practically freed of loose sand and muck, a diver went down. The box, he reported, was resting just about level with the dam's base.

This time, Nelson and his associates wanted to take no chances on losing the treasure for the third time. The Merritt-Stevens Shipyard at Jacksonville sent salvage experts to look the situation over, then went back to design and build a special grapple of a type that bit harder into whatever it was holding as pressure from above was exerted. Engineers advised locking the jaws around the object, then putting all steam pressure possible to work at once. This was done. The donkey engine groaned, the cable became tight as a bowstring, then slowly the muck and sand began yielding up the box they had coveted so many years. Gradually, a corner of the box came into view. Spectators could see that it, like Baird's find, was probably about three and a half by two by one and a half feet in size.

A full third of the box had been raised above the quicksand when individual strands of the steel cable began to pop like tortured piano wires. Engineers later said this should have been a signal to ease pressure until a new cable could be substituted, but excited workmen did not think of this in time. The cable parted, and box and grapple sank back into the boiling sand. Water slowly seeped into the cofferdam as a result of the bottom sands being agitated. By nightfall, the pit had filled, and once more Nelson was without funds with which to continue his effort. ,

The operation had carried over into 1924. Bob Mahon, like Joe Curry years before, gave up and went back to more certain breadwinning. But Nelson, though broke a second time, was not licked, A year later, he found more friends who would come to his rescue—this time a group composed mainly of Daytona Beach and Orlando businessmen. While funds available were more limited than on previous attempts, he felt so sure of his goal that he started clearing away the site once more, and by the summer of 1926 had hired divers to work down to the box while water was pumped into the dam to liquidate the quicksand and allow them to move through the black muck.

Just as the divers were getting ready to raise the old grapple, the elements turned against Nelson once more. One of the most destructive hurricanes of the century struck, driving the waters of the Gulf back to mingle with those of the Suwannee. Again Nelson's equipment was ruined, the cofferdam filled with water hyacinths and muck, and he gave up for good.

But the fever to recover the treasure had spread widely over the country. Nelson had hardly cleared out before another group, full of optimism and surefire methods, was ready to take up the tug of war with the quicksands.

This time, the project was largely financed by Ernest Buckley, a Springfield, Massachusetts, businessman. The group was made up of at least twenty-one persons, who put finances in according to their ability and interest. Included were Maj. William C. Willams, ex-Army officer; Robert Reynalds, Harry Eastwood and Lincoln Barnes, all of Orlando; and Jack Harold, an adventurer who turned up with a little money and unbounded enthusiasm. A few businessmen from Ithaca, New York, were also included. As Dr. A. Hyatt Verrill, historian and authority on buried treasure, who was later called in as technical adviser, now says, "We had the makings of a first-class mess, and before the business was over, we had it."

The Suwannee, after the flood that first covered Nelson's operation, never receded to its old banks. By the time this group took over, the steel cofferdam that Nelson had started was partly washed by swift-flowing water. The dam itself had buckled when first installed and had never been completely watertight. It was this later group's intention to sink a second shaft inside the first, like a sock in a boot, pump water out of this, and work downward from it.

But first, they reasoned, Nelson had not driven his steel cofferdam plates deeply enough. At least four feet was still sticking up above water level on one side. Drop hammers were brought in, the plates were driven deeper until they were level on all sides, then they prepared the inner section and lowered it until divers could go down and attend to sealing leaks around the bottom. When they went down, they found that the irregular top level had been necessary because bedrock sharply slanted at this spot. In forcing the plates deeper, they had cracked the thin stratum of rock on which the chest then had been resting. The tilting floor then left the chest free to sink still lower, and to slip out from under the area covered by the dam. It was on the loose again.

Two more divers were hired to attempt to locate the chest. One of them nearly lost his life when still more of the old shaft collapsed, fouling his air line until only enough oxygen was getting through to maintain life for an hour while rescuers above removed timbers and got his lines untangled. He declared he'd had enough treasure hunting, and left.

The other diver continued exploring the bottom of the cofferdam, to find that a deep gully existed across its bottom, and that the chest evidently had slipped through this crevice. He worked under constant danger of the cofferdam's collapsing and burying him under tons of sand and water, and had a dangerously narrow escape when a ledge on which he was working about twenty feet under water gave way, sending sand and rocks down on him and causing another large leak in the cofferdam.

Doctor Verrill determined to stop leaks in the cofferdam once and for all. Cement, Spanish moss, sandbags and even sawdust were packed down around its outer surface. It failed to work. A sort of steel bathtub was lowered over the crevice, so that the diver could work with less danger of being jammed between sliding rocks. Even this collapsed after two days of use, pinning the diver there until he deflated his suit and was hauled, barely alive, to the surface. That curse again.

An arrangement was made with H. C. Nutting Company, of Cincinnati, to make test borings for determining the exact location of the chest. The first drilling struck something containing metal. It proved to be a wooden block thickly studded with old handmade spikes. But the second boring, made just outside Nelson's steel cofferdam, brought unmistakable gold smears. Again and again the drill was sunk at this spot, and each time streaks of gold appeared. The entire company assembled. There were loud and heated arguments as to how best to recover the treasure. It was thirty-two feet under water, rock and quicksand. The diver declared he could do nothing more under existing conditions, although he was sure they had struck the real thing. The jinx or curse seemed to have been standing by, laughing.

That it had something definitely amusing to laugh at is apparent to anyone trying today to get an exact chronology of subsequent events. There were twenty-one interested parties to this search, and fully that number of versions of what happened next or why the group did not succeed. Buried treasure traditionally has been the source of fights, murders and bad blood generally, and the hoard at Fowler's Bluff was no exception. First came fist fights. The twenty-one interested persons split into smaller partisan groups. Each set a watch over the others. Those who wanted to continue the recovery without delay were opposed by others who did not agree with methods proposed.

"Captain Jack," as Jack Harold was known, came home from Chiefland one night and by accident noticed some wires leading under the shack he had erected for himself. On investigation, he found fourteen sticks of dynamite in excellent position to blow him higher than the surrounding cypress trees. One of the group distributed a box of candy among the others. Those who ate it were moaning in agony a short time later. Chemical analysis revealed signs of arsenic, but, luckily, not enough to kill. That partner cleared out before the analysis came back.

The Trimmings of Fiction

One group accused another of plans to hijack the treasure when it was recovered. One man got so nervous that he built a shack up in the spreading branches of a water-oak tree and pulled his ladder up behind him when he retired each night. There were open threats of murder, and someone took a pot shot at Doctor Verrill from the edge of a near-by swamp. The crowning incident, at least so far as Captain Jack was concerned, was when he returned from a trip to Chiefland to find his house a glowing bed of coals. He gave up and left, but was believed to have spied on subsequent operations from surrounding swamps. Later, a decomposed body which several members of the operation believed his was found floating down the Suwannee toward the Gulf.

One of the partners—if such they could be called—committed suicide when he saw all his funds going into the sinkhole with nothing coming back in return. Gradually the company dwindled. One of them confided to me that fear of outright murder on the spot, even if the gold could be recovered and divided equitably, led him to quit the undertaking and charge his lost cash to interesting experience.

Finally, Doctor Verrill, still convinced that great riches or at least very interesting historical matter lay almost within grasp, was left with his wife and one or two others to carry on alone. They had no money to keep the operation going. Attempts to do the work themselves proved impossible. Reluctantly, but still convinced the treasure would be brought to light someday, they rolled up the canvas tents that had sheltered them and left the eagles and panthers in possession.

"The curse got us," he laughingly admits today.

The Mysterious Stranger

But the curse and the sands may not be victors, after all. Four years ago, shortly after Doctor Verrill left, a large tract of land that included Fowler's Bluff was purchased by Walter L. Cooper, Sanford investment and real-estate broker, primarily for logging purposes. Former owners of the Bluff retained right to a percentage of whatever was found of the treasure. That inspired Cooper to carry out the greatest research yet completed concerning the cache and its possible source. Today he is convinced, as are many of his friends, state officials and qualified engineers who have studied the evidence and inspected the site, that there is wealth of some kind buried there, and that it can be recovered with proper modern machinery.

At the time the original map was dated, the site was occupied by friendly Creek Indians, ancestors of present-day Seminoles. Government records confirm the fact that Gasparilla, Billy (Bowlegs) Rogers, Lafitte and others of their fraternity used the estuary of the Suwannee as a meeting place where they traded loot—Lafitte was actually more a pirate fence than an outright buccaneer—and made plans for raids. Billy Bowlegs lived until 1888, when he died at the age of ninety-five.

The stranger who appeared in Hardee Town shortly after Billy's death, some authorities reason, might well have come into possession of the map just prior to or following his death, and could well have been a cabin boy with Lafitte, since several of his men retired from piracy and joined Billy when he settled near Tallahassee.

As this is written, plans are under way to move large dredges over to Fowler's Bluff from Mobile. A New York engineering firm, using the latest instruments developed by Westinghouse, is to supervise the dredging of a small harborlike basin which will take in all the territory where the treasure, according to the old map, might be buried. Every scoop of sand will be filtered, on the possibility that chests of coins might have been damaged.

The War Department has granted permission for the navigable channel in the river to be changed, as this dredging operation will necessitate. Divers have been engaged to keep an underwater watch as each scoop is lifted from the bottom. With ample funds to carry the operation to completion, Cooper is convinced that secrets the "curse" has been guarding so many years soon will be wrested from the Suwannee's treacherous and tenacious sands by modern mechanical force.

Further to this on checking through the web, a couple more links tells us that today the story is still not resolved.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?i...50512&dq=spanish-gold&hl=en

and follow up:

http://news.google.com/newspapers?i...dq=gold+doubloons+florida&hl=en

and later

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/03/070315-pirate-treasure.html