r, with a capital of $10,000,
to fit out an expedition for Cocos Island. Gissler got wind of this
project and formally addressed the government of Costa Rica in these
written words:

"Allow me to inform you that no company with any such intent would have
the right to land on Cocos Island, as I hold a concession from the
authorities of Costa Rica in regard to the said treasure, in which
concession the Costa Rica government has an interest. Certainly
anything that might be undertaken by such a company from Vancouver
would amount to naught without my consent."

This protest was paid due heed, but two years later, an Englishman,
Claude Robert Guiness, persuaded the officials of Costa Rica to listen
kindly to his plea, and he was granted the right to explore the island
for two years. Gissler stood by his guns, drew up a list of
grievances, and sailed for the mainland in a small boat to assert his
rights to his kingdom. At that time, a wealthy British naval officer,
Lord Fitzwilliam, was bound out to Cocos Island in his own steam yacht
with a costly equipment of machinery and a heavy crew to find the
treasure. He found poor Gissler in a Costa Rican port, became
interested in his wrongs, and promptly supported his claims. An
English nobleman with surplus wealth is a person to wield influence in
the councils of a Central American republic and Gissler was pacified
and given a renewal of his documentary rights as governor and
population of Cocos Island.

Lord Fitzwilliam took him on board the yacht and in this dignified
fashion Gissler returned to this kingdom. He earned his passage by
telling his own version of the treasure, as he had culled and revised
it from various sources, and his bill of particulars was something to
gloat over, including as it did such dazzling bits of narrative as this:

"Besides the treasure buried by Captain Thompson, there was vast wealth
left on Cocos by Benito Bonito himself. He captured a treasure galleon
off the coast of Peru and took two other vessels laden with riches sent
out from Mexico at the outbreak of the revolution against the
Spaniards. On Cocos he buried three hundred thousand pounds' weight of
silver and silver dollars, in a sandstone cave in the side of the
mountain. Then he laid kegs of powder on top of the cave and blew away
the face of the cliff. In another excavation he placed gold bricks,
733 of them, four by three inches in size, and two inches thick, and
273 gold