no Kidd story is properly decorated
without its guardian demon or menacing ghost), and the divining rod,
handed down from an age of witchcraft, necromancy, and black magic,
deserves a place in the kit of every well-equipped treasure seeker.
Sober, hard-headed Scotchmen from Glasgow employ a Yorkshire "dowser"
to search for the treasure lost in the _Florencia_ galleon in Tobermory
Bay, and he shows them, and they are convinced, that he can tell
whether it be gold, or silver, or copper, which exerts its occult
influence over his divining rod.[5] This happens in the year 1906,
mind you, but our ardent investigator, M. de Vallemont, was writing two
hundred years before:

"But, with the divining rod, it is possible to distinguish what metal
is contained in the mine towards which the rod inclines. For if a gold
coin be placed in each hand, the rod will only turn in the direction of
gold, because it becomes impregnated with the _corpuscles_ or minute
particles of gold. If silver be treated in the same way, the rod will
only dip towards silver. This, at any rate, is what we are told by
those who pride themselves on their successful use of the rod."

John Stears, the expert diviner, who was recently employed at Tobermory
Bay, is more frequently retained to search for water than for lost
treasure. This is his vocation and he takes it seriously enough, as
his own words indicate:[6]

"The power is not in the rod, but in the user, the rod acting as an
indicator, and rising when over a stream. By moving the arms as I
proceed, I can keep on the edge of an underground stream, for the apex
descends when the rod is not over the stream. I have several times
followed a line of water down to the shore, being rowed out in the bay,
and found the water boiling up mixed with land weeds. At such a spot
there is no movement of the rod except over the course of the stream.
It is almost impossible to describe the sensation caused whilst using
the rod; it is sometimes like a current of electricity going through
the arms and legs. On raising one foot from the ground the rod
descends. The effect produced when walking is that the rod has the
appearance of a fishing rod when the fish is hooked,--the rod seems
alive. Move it clear of the line of water and down it goes.

"Very few people have the gift of finding water or minerals, and not
many rods will do, but those that have thorns on them are all right.
In the tropics I used acacia, and