oftener among the islands further seaward
and toward the Irish coast, are to be found black-eyed and black-haired
men and women, not of the pure Celtic race, in whose blood is the
distant strain bequeathed by those ancestors who married shipwrecked
Spanish sailors of the Armada, and perhaps among them are descendants
of these two or three seamen who were hurled ashore alive when the
_Florencia_ was destroyed by the hand of young Donald Glas MacLean.

In quaint Tobermory whose main street nestles along the edge of the
bay, the ancient foemen, MacLeans and MacDonalds, tend their shops side
by side, and it seems as if almost every other signboard bore one of
these clan names. If you would hear the best talk of the galleon and
her treasure, it is wise to seek the tiny grocery and ship chandlery of
Captain Coll MacDonald, a gentle white-bearded man, so slight of
stature and mild of mien and speech that you are surprised to learn
that for many years he was master of a great white-winged clipper ship
of the famous City Line of Glasgow, in the days when this distinction
meant something. Now he has come back to spend his latter days in this
tranquil harbor and to spin yarns of many seas.

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[Illustration: Scabbards, flasks, cannon balls, and small objects
recovered from the sunken Armada galleon.]

Stone cannon balls and breech-block of a breech loading gun fished up
from the wreck of the Florencia galleon.

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"The scour of the tide has settled the wreck of the galleon many feet
in the sand," he told me. "I can show you on a chart what the old
bearings were, as they were handed down from one generation to the
next, but Captain Burns is not sure that he has yet found her. The
money is there, I have no doubt. There was a bark in the bay not long
ago, and when she pulled up anchor a Spanish doubloon was sticking to
one fluke. Mr. Stears, the Yorkshireman with the divining rod, did
some wonderful things, but the treasure was not found. To test him,
bags of silver and gold and copper money were buoyed under water in the
bay, with no marks to show. It was done by night and he was kept away.
He went out in a boat next morning and was rowed around a bit, and
wherever the metal was hid under water, his twig told him, without a
mistake. More than that, he knew what kind of metal it was u