"... There are among us great numbers of honest artificers and laboring people, who, fed with a vain hope of suddenly growing rich, neglect their business, almost to the ruining of themselves and families, and voluntarily endure abundance of fatigue in a fruitless search after imaginary hidden treasure. They wander through the woods and bushes by day to discover the marks and signs; at midnight they repair to the hopeful spots with spades and pickaxes; full of expectation, they labor violently, trembling at the same time in every joint through fear of certain malicious demons, who are said to haunt and guard such places.

"At length a mighty hole is dug, and perhaps several cart-loads of earth thrown out; but, alas, no keg or iron pot is found. No seaman's chest crammed with Spanish pistoles, or weighty pieces of eight! They conclude that, through some mistake in the procedure, some rash word spoken, or some rule of art neglected, the guardian spirit had power to sink it deeper into the earth, and convey it out of their reach. Yet, when a man is once infatuated, he is so far from being discouraged by ill success that he is rather animated to double his industry, and will try again and again in a hundred different places in hopes of meeting at last with some lucky hit, that shall at once sufficiently reward him for all his expenses of time and labor.

"This odd humor of digging for money, through a belief that much has been hidden by pirates formerly frequenting the (Schuylkill) river, has for several years been mighty prevalent among us; insomuch that you can hardly walk half a mile out of the town on any side without observing several pits dug with that design, and perhaps some lately opened. Men otherwise of very good sense have been drawn into this practice through an overweening desire of sudden wealth, and an easy credulity of what they so earnestly wished might be true. There seems to be some peculiar charm in the conceit of finding money and if the sands of Schuylkill were so much mixed with small grains of gold that a man might in a day's time with care and application get together to the value of half a crown, I make no question but we should find several people employed there that can with ease earn five shillings a day at their proper trade.

"Many are the idle stories told of the private success of some people, by which others are encouraged to proceed; and the astrologers, with whom the country swarms at this time, are either in the belief of these things themselves, or find their advantage in persuading others to believe them; for they are often consulted about the critical times for digging, the methods of laying the spirit, and the like whimseys, which renders them very necessary to, and very much caressed by these poor, deluded money hunters.

"There is certainly something very bewitching in the pursuit after mines of gold and silver and other valuable metals, and many have been ruined by it....

"Let honest Peter Buckram, who has long without success been a searcher after hidden money, reflect on this, and be reclaimed from that unaccountable folly. Let him consider that every stitch he takes when he is on his shopboard, is picking up part of a grain of gold that will in a few days' time amount to a pistole; and let Faber think the same of every nail he drives, or every stroke with his plane. Such thoughts may make them industrious, and, in consequence, in time they may be wealthy.

"But how absurd it is to neglect a certain profit for such a ridiculous whimsey; to spend whole days at the 'George' in company with an idle pretender to astrology, contriving schemes to discover what was never hidden, and forgetful how carelessly business is managed at home in their absence; to leave their wives and a warm bed at midnight (no matter if it rain, hail, snow, or blow a hurricane, provided that be the critical hour), and fatigue themselves with the violent digging for what they shall never find, and perhaps getting a cold that may cost their lives, or at least disordering themselves so as to be fit for no business beside for some days after. Surely this is nothing less than the most egregious folly and madness.

"I shall conclude with the words of the discreet friend Agricola of Chester County when he gave his son a good plantation. 'My son,' said he, 'I give thee now a valuable parcel of land; I assure thee I have found a considerable quantity of gold by digging there; thee mayest do the same; but thee must carefully observe this, Never to dig more than plough-deep."

For once the illustrious Franklin shot wide of the mark. These treasure hunters of Philadelphia, who had seen with their own eyes more than one notorious pirate, even Blackbeard himself, swagger along Front Street or come roaring out of the Blue Anchor Tavern by Dock Creek, were finding their reward in the coin of romance. Digging mighty holes for a taskmaster would have been irksome, stupid business indeed, even for five shillings a day. They got a fearsome kind of enjoyment in "trembling violently through fear of certain malicious demons." And honest Peter Buckram no doubt discovered that life was more zestful when he was plying shovel and pickaxe, or whispering with an astrologer in a corner of the "George" than during the flat hours of toil with shears and goose. If the world had charted its course by Poor Richard's Almanac, there would be a vast deal more thrift and sober industry than exists, but no room for the spirit of adventure which reckons not its returns in dollars and cents.

There are many kinds of lost treasure, by sea and by land. Some of them, however, lacking the color of romance and the proper backgrounds of motive and incident, have no stories worth telling. For instance, there were almost five thousand wrecks on the Great Lakes during a period of twenty years, and these lost vessels carried down millions of treasure or property worth trying to recover. One steamer had five hundred thousand dollars' worth of copper in her hold. Divers and submarine craft and wrecking companies have made many attempts to recover these vanished riches, and with considerable success, now and then fishing up large amounts of gold coin and bullion. It goes without saying that the average sixteen-year-old boy could extract not one solitary thrill from a tale of lost treasure in the Great Lakes, even though the value might be fairly fabulous. But let him hear that a number of Spanish coins have been washed up by the waves on a beach of Yucatan and the discovery has set the natives to searching for the buried treasure of Jean Lafitte, the "Pirate of the Gulf," and our youngster pricks up his ears.

Many noble merchantmen in modern times have foundered or crashed ashore in various seas with large fortunes in their treasure rooms, and these are sought by expeditions, but because these ships were not galleons nor carried a freightage of doubloons and pieces of eight, most of them must be listed in the catalogue of undistinguished sea tragedies. The distinction is really obvious. The treasure story must have the picaresque flavor or at least concern itself with bold deeds done by strong men in days gone by. Like wine its bouquet is improved by age.

It is the fashion to consider lost treasure as the peculiar property of pirates and galleons, and yet what has become of the incredibly vast riches of all the vanished kings, despots, and soldiers who plundered the races of men from the beginnings of history? Where is the loot of ancient Home that was buried with Alaric! Where is the dazzling treasure of Samarcand? Where is the wealth of Antioch, and where the jewels which Solomon gave the Queen of Sheba? During thousands of years of warfare the treasures of the Old World could be saved from the conqueror only by hiding them underground, and in countless instances the sword must have slain those who knew the secret. When Genghis Khan swept across Russia with his hordes of savage Mongols towns and cities were blotted out as by fire, and doubtless those of the slaughtered population who had gold and precious stones buried them and there they still await the treasure seeker. What was happening everywhere during the ruthless ages of conquest and spoliation[2] is indicated by this bit of narrative told by a native banker of India to W. Forbes Mitchell, author of "Reminiscences of the Great Mutiny":

"You know how anxious the late Maharajah Scindia was to get back the fortress of Gwalior, but very few knew the real cause prompting him. That was a concealed horde of sixty crores (sixty millions sterling) of rupees in certain vaults within the fortress, over which British sentinels had been walking for thirty years, never suspecting the wealth hidden under their feet. Long before the British Government restored the fortress to the Maharajah everyone who knew the entrance to the vaults was dead except one man and he was extremely old. Although he was in good health he might have died any day. If this had happened, the treasure might have been lost to the owner forever and to the world for ages, because there was only one method of entrance and it was most cunningly concealed. On all sides, except for this series of blind passages, the vaults were surrounded by solid rock.