Province Island, in Lake Memphremagog, Vermont, is believed to contain some of the profits of an extensive smuggling enterprise that was carried on near the lake for several years.
A little company of Spanish adventurers passed along the base of the Green Mountains early in the last century, expecting to return after having some dealings with the trading stations on the St. Lawrence; so they deposited a part of their gold on Ludlow Mountain, Vermont, and another pot of it on Camel's Hump. They agreed that none should return without his companions, but they were detained in the north and separated, some of them going home to Spain. Late in life the sole survivor of the company went to Camel's Hump and tried to recall where the treasure had been hidden, but in vain.
While flying from the people whose declaration of independence had already been written in the blood of the king's troops at Concord, the royal governor—Wentworth—was embarrassed by a wife and a treasure-chest. He had left his mansion, at Smith's Pond, New Hampshire, and was making toward Portsmouth, where he was to enjoy the protection of the British fleet, but the country was up in arms, time was important, and as his wearied horses could not go on without a lightening of the burden, he was forced to leave behind either Lady Wentworth or his other riches. As the lady properly objected to any risk of her own safety, the chest was buried at an unknown spot in the forest, and for a century and more the whereabouts of the Wentworth plate and money-bags have been a matter of search and conjecture.
When the Hessian troops marched from Saratoga to Boston, to take ship after Burgoyne's surrender, they were in wretched condition-war-worn, ragged, and ill fed,—and having much with them in the form of plate and jewels that had been spared by their conquerors, together with some of the money sent from England for their hire, they were in constant fear of attack from the farmers, who, though they had been beaten, continued to regard them with an unfavorable eye. On reaching Dalton, Massachusetts, the Hessians agreed among themselves to put their valuables into a howitzer, which they buried in the woods, intending that some of their number should come back at the close of the war and recover it. An Indian had silently followed them for a long distance, to gather up any unconsidered trifles that might be left in their bivouacs, and he marked the route by blazes on the trees; but if he saw the burial of this novel treasury it meant nothing to him, and the knowledge of the hiding-place was lost. For years the populace kept watch of all strangers that came to town, and shadowed them if they went to the woods, but without result. In about the year 1800 the supposed hiding-place was examined closely and excavations were made, but, as before, nothing rewarded the search.
A tree of unknown age—the Old Elm—stood on Boston Common until within a few years. This veteran, torn and broken by many a gale and lightning-stroke, was a gallows in the last century, and Goody Glover had swung from it in witch-times. On tempestuous nights, when the boughs creaked together, it was said that dark shapes might be seen writhing on the branches and capering about the sward below in hellish glee. On a gusty autumn evening in 1776 a muffled form presented itself, unannounced, at the chamber of Mike Wild, and, after that notorious miser had enough recovered from the fear created by the presence to understand what it said to him, he realized that it was telling him of something that in life it had buried at the foot of the Old Elm. After much hesitancy Mike set forth with his ghostly guide, for he would have risked his soul for money, but on arriving at his destination he was startled to find himself alone. Nothing daunted, he set down his lantern and began to dig. Though he turned up many a rood of soil and sounded with his spade for bags and chests of gold, he found nothing. Strange noises overhead—for the wind was high and the twigs seemed to snicker eerily as they crossed each other-sent thrills along his back from time to time, and he was about to return, half in anger, half in fear, when his spirit visitor emerged from behind the tree and stood before him. The mien was threatening, the nose had reddened and extended, the hair was rumpled, and the brow was scowling. The frown of the gold monster grew more awful, the stare of his eye in the starlight more unbearable, and he was crouching and creeping as if for a spring. Mike could endure no more. He fainted, and awakened in the morning in his own chamber, where, to a neighbor who made an early call, he told—with embellishments—the story of the encounter; but before he had come to the end of the narrative the visitor burst into a roar of laughter and confessed that he had personated the supernatural visitant, having wagered a dozen bottles of wine with the landlord of the Boar's Head that he could get the better of Mike Wild. For all this the old tree bore, for many years, an evil reputation.
A Spanish galleon, the Saints Joseph and Helena, making from Havana to Cadiz in 1753 was carried from her course by adverse winds and tossed against a reef, near New London, Connecticut, receiving injuries that compelled her to run into that port for repairs. To reach her broken ribs more easily her freight was put on shore in charge of the collector of the port, but when it was desired to ship the cargo again, behold! the quarter part of it had disappeared, none could say how. New London got a bad name from this robbery, and the governor, though besought by the assembly to make good the shortage, failed to do so, and lost his place at the next election. It was reputed that some of the treasure was buried on the shore by the robbers. In 1827 a woman who was understood to have the power of seership published a vision to a couple of young blades, who had paid for it, to the effect that hidden under one of the grass-grown wharves was a box of dollars. By the aid of a crystal pebble she received this really valuable information, but the pebble was not clear enough to reveal the exact place of the box. She could see, however, that the dollars were packed edgewise. When New London was sound asleep the young men stole out and by lantern-light began their work. They had dug to water-level when they reached an iron chest, and they stooped to lift it-but, to their amazement, the iron was too hot to handle! Now they heard deep growls, and a giant dog peered at them from the pit-mouth; red eyes flashed at them from the darkness; a wild-goose, with eyes of blazing green, hovered and screamed above them. Though the witch had promised them safety, nothing appeared to ward off the fantastic shapes that began to crowd about them. Too terrified to work longer they sprang out and made away, and when-taking courage from the sunshine—they renewed the search, next day, the iron chest had vanished.
On Crown Point, Lake Champlain, is the ruin of a fort erected by Lord Amherst above the site of a French work that had been thrown up in 1731 to guard a now vanished capital of fifteen hundred people. It was declared that when the French evacuated the region they buried money and bullion in a well, in the northwest corner of the bastion, ninety feet deep, in the full expectancy of regaining it, and half a century ago this belief had grown to such proportions that fifty men undertook to clear the well, pushing their investigations into various parts of the enclosure and over surrounding fields. They found quantities of lead and iron and no gold.
Follingsby's Pond, in the Adirondacks, was named for a recluse, who, in the early part of this century, occupied a lonely but strongly guarded cabin there. It was believed afterward that he was an English army officer, of noble birth, who had left his own country in disgust at having discovered an attachment between his wife and one of his fellow-officers. He died in a fever, and while raving in a delirium spoke of a concealed chest. A trapper, who was his only attendant in his last moments, dug over the ground floor of the hut and found a box containing a jewelled sword, costly trinkets, and letters that bore out the presumption of Follingsby's aristocratic origin. What became of these valuables after their exhumation is not known, and the existence of more has been suspected.
Coney Island is declared to have been used by a band of pirates as the first national sand bank, and, as these rascals were caught and swung off with short shrift, they do say that the plunder is still to be had—by the man who finds it. But the hotel-keepers and three-card-monte men are not waiting for that discovery to grow rich.
In Shandaken Valley, in the Catskills, it was affirmed that a party of British officers buried money somewhere, when they were beset by the farmers and hunters of that region, and never got it out of the earth again.