FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37  
38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   >>  
nders imparted to them a spirituous and patriotic glow--for in thus destroying the secreted stores of a royalist were they not asserting the triumph of democratic principles? The clay bluffs at Pottery Beach, Brooklyn, were pierced with artificial caves where lawless men found shelter in the unsettled first years of the republic. A wreck lay rotting here for many years, and it was said to be the skeleton of a ship that these fellows had beached by false beacons. She had costly freight aboard, and on the morning after she went ashore crew and freight had vanished. It was believed that much of the plunder was buried in the clay near the water's edge. In the early colonial days, Grand Island, in Niagara River, was the home of a Frenchman, Clairieux, an exile or refugee who was attended by a negro servant. During one summer a sloop visited the island frequently, laden on each trip with chests that never were taken away in the sight of men, and that are now supposed to be buried near the site of the Frenchman's cabin. Report had it that these boxes were filled with money, but if well or ill procured none could say, unless it were the Frenchman, and he had no remarks to offer on the subject. In the fall, after these visits of the sloop, Clairieux disappeared, and when some hunters landed on the island they found that his cabin had been burned and that a large skeleton, evidently that of the negro, was chained to the earth in the centre of the place where the house had stood. The slave had been killed, it was surmised, that his spirit might watch the hoard and drive away intruders; but the Frenchman met his fate elsewhere, and his secret, like that of many another miser, perished with him. In 1888, when a northeast gale had blown back the water of the river, a farmer living on the island discovered, just under the surface, a stone foundation built in circular form, as if it had once supported a tower. In the mud within this circle he found a number of French gold and silver coins, one of them minted in 1537. Close by, other coins of later date were found, and a systematic examination of the whole channel has been proposed, as it was also said that two French frigates, scuttled to keep them out of the hands of the English, lie bedded in sand below the island, one of them with a naval paymaster's chest on board. On the shore of Oneida Lake is an Indian's grave, where a ball of light is wont to swing and dance. A farmer named B
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37  
38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   >>  



Top keywords:

island

 

Frenchman

 
farmer
 

freight

 

French

 
skeleton
 

Clairieux

 

buried

 

living

 

discovered


northeast
 

supported

 
patriotic
 

foundation

 

circular

 

surface

 

killed

 
surmised
 

spirit

 

chained


centre

 
perished
 

secret

 

intruders

 

spirituous

 
paymaster
 

English

 
bedded
 
Oneida
 

Indian


minted
 

imparted

 

silver

 

circle

 

number

 

evidently

 
systematic
 

frigates

 

scuttled

 

proposed


examination

 

channel

 

landed

 
Pottery
 
Brooklyn
 

pierced

 

believed

 

plunder

 

colonial

 

principles