idores,
ducats, and pistareens, yawned before his ravished eyes and vomited
forth their glittering contents."

The warp and woof of "Wolfert Webber" is the still persistent legend
that Kidd buried treasure near the Highlands of the lower Hudson, or
that his ship, the _Quedah Merchant_, was fetched from San Domingo by
his men after he left her and they sailed her into the Hudson and there
scuttled the vessel, scattering ashore and dividing a vast amount of
plunder, some of which was hidden nearby. Many years ago a pamphlet
was published, purporting to be true, which was entitled, "An Account
of Some of the Traditions and Experiments Respecting Captain Kidd's
Piratical Vessel." In this it was soberly asserted that Kidd in the
_Quedah Merchant_ was chased into the North River by an English
man-of-war, and finding himself cornered he and his crew took to the
boats with what treasure they could carry, after setting fire to the
ship, and fled up the Hudson, thence footing it through the wilderness
to Boston.

The sunken ship was searched for from time to time, and the explorers
were no doubt assisted by another pamphlet published early in the
nineteenth century which proclaimed itself as:

"A Wonderful Mesmeric Revelation, giving an Account of the Discovery
and Description of a Sunken Vessel, near Caldwell's Landing, supposed
to be that of the Pirate Kidd; including an Account of his Character
and Death, at a distance of nearly three hundred miles from the place."

This psychic information came from a woman by the name of Chester
living in Lynn, Mass., who swore she had never heard of the sunken
treasure ship until while in a trance she beheld its shattered timbers
covered with sand, and "bars of massive gold, heaps of silver coin, and
precious jewels including many large and brilliant diamonds. The
jewels had been enclosed in shot bags of stout canvas. There were also
gold watches, like duck's eggs in a pond of water, and the wonderfully
preserved remains of a very beautiful woman, with a necklace of
diamonds around her neck."

As Irving takes pains to indicate, the basis of the legend of the
sunken pirate ship came not from Kidd but from another freebooter who
flourished at the same time. Says Peechy Prauw, daring to hold
converse with the old buccaneer in the tavern, "Kidd never did bury
money up the Hudson, nor indeed in any of those parts, though many
affirmed such to be the fact. It was Bradish and others of