se treasure
buried, consisting principally of gold and silver plate and ornaments,
the plunder of Peruvian churches which certain pirates had concealed
there in the year 1821. Much of this plate, he said, came from the
cathedral of Lima, having been carried away from there during the war
of independence, when the Spaniards were escaping the country and that
among other riches were several massive gold candle-sticks.

"He further stated that he was the only survivor of the pirates, as all
the others had been captured by the Spaniards and executed in Cuba some
years before, and consequently it was probable that no one but himself
knew the secret. He then gave the captain instructions as to the exact
position of the treasure in the bay under the Sugar Loaf, and enjoined
him to go there and search for it, as it was almost certain that it had
not been removed."

Mr. Knight, who was a young barrister of London, investigated this
story with much diligence, and discovered that the captain aforesaid
had sent his son to Trinidad in 1880 to try to identify the marks shown
on the old pirate's tarpaulin chart. He landed from a sailing ship,
did no digging for lack of equipment, but reported that the place
tallied exactly with the description, although a great landslide of
reddish earth had covered the place where the treasure was hid. This
evidence was so convincing that in 1885 an expedition was organized
among several adventurous gentlemen of South Shields who chartered a
bark of six hundred tons, the _Aurea_, and fitted her at a large outlay
with surf boats, picks, shovels, timber, blasting powder, and other
stores. This party found the island almost inaccessible because of the
wild, rock-bound coast, the huge breakers which beat about it from all
sides, and the lack of harbors and safe anchorage. After immense
difficulty, eight men were landed, with a slender store of provisions
and a few of the tools. The dismal aspect of the island, the armies of
huge land crabs which tried to devour them, the burning heat, and the
hard labor without enough food or water, soon disheartened this band of
treasure seekers, and they dug no more than a small trench before
courage and strength forsook them. Signaling to their ships, they were
taken off, worn out and ill, and thus ended the efforts of the
expedition.

In the same year, an American skipper chartered a French sailing vessel
in Rio Janeiro, and sailed for Trinidad with four P