This entertaining American may perhaps have unearthed information hitherto unknown, but the fact is worth some stress that all previous investigations had failed to prove beyond doubt that the Florencia bore from Spain the thirty millions of money reputed to have been stowed in her lazarette. An ancient document known as "The Confession of Gregorie de Sotomeya of Melgaco in Portugal" contains a list of the treasure ships of the Armada. He was with the fleet in the galleon Neustra Senora del Rosario, commanded by Dom Pedro de Valdes, and he goes on to say:
"To the sixth question concerning what treasure there was in the fleet, I say there was great stories of money and plate which came in the galleon wherein the Duke of Medina was (The San Martin), and in the ship of Dom Pedro de Valdez which was taken, and in the Admiral of the galleons (The San Lorenzo), and in the Galley Royal (The Capitana Royale), and in the Vice Admiral wherein was Juan Martinez de Ricalde (The Santa Anna), and in the Vice Admiral whereof was General Diego (The San Christobel), and in the Vice Admiral of the pinnaces (N. S. de Pilar de Targoza), and in the Vice-Admiral of the hulks (The Gran Grifon), and in a Venitian ship in which came General Don Alonzo de Leyna. The report goeth that this ship brought great stores of treasure, for that there came in her the Prince of Ascoli, and many other noblemen. This is all I know touching the treasure."
The name of the Florencia does not appear herein, yet the report of her vast riches was current in the Western Highlands no more than one lifetime after the year of the Armada. That men of solid business station and considerable capital can be found to-day to charter wrecking steamers, divers, dredges, and what not to continue this enterprise proves that romance is not wholly dead.
In the town of Tobermory, the busy, mysterious parties of treasure seekers, as they come year after year with their impressive flotilla of apparatus, furnish endless diversion and conjecture. The people will tell you, in the broad English of the Highlander, and in the Gaelic, even more musical, as it survives among the Western Islands, the legend of the beautiful Spanish princess who came in the Florencia, and was wooed and won by a bold MacLean, and they will show you the old mill whose timbers, still staunchly standing, were taken from the wreck of the galleon. In Mull, and oftener among the islands further seaward and toward the Irish coast, are to be found black-eyed and black-haired men and women, not of the pure Celtic race, in whose blood is the distant strain bequeathed by those ancestors who married shipwrecked Spanish sailors of the Armada, and perhaps among them are descendants of these two or three seamen who were hurled ashore alive when the Florencia was destroyed by the hand of young Donald Glas MacLean.
In quaint Tobermory whose main street nestles along the edge of the bay, the ancient foemen, MacLeans and MacDonalds, tend their shops side by side, and it seems as if almost every other signboard bore one of these clan names. If you would hear the best talk of the galleon and her treasure, it is wise to seek the tiny grocery and ship chandlery of Captain Coll MacDonald, a gentle white-bearded man, so slight of stature and mild of mien and speech that you are surprised to learn that for many years he was master of a great white-winged clipper ship of the famous City Line of Glasgow, in the days when this distinction meant something. Now he has come back to spend his latter days in this tranquil harbor and to spin yarns of many seas.
