"The scour of the tide has settled the wreck of the galleon many feet in the sand," he told me. "I can show you on a chart what the old bearings were, as they were handed down from one generation to the next, but Captain Burns is not sure that he has yet found her. The money is there, I have no doubt. There was a bark in the bay not long ago, and when she pulled up anchor a Spanish doubloon was sticking to one fluke. Mr. Stears, the Yorkshireman with the divining rod, did some wonderful things, but the treasure was not found. To test him, bags of silver and gold and copper money were buoyed under water in the bay, with no marks to show. It was done by night and he was kept away. He went out in a boat next morning and was rowed around a bit, and wherever the metal was hid under water, his twig told him, without a mistake. More than that, he knew what kind of metal it was under the water."
"And how was that!" I asked of Captain Coll MacDonald.
"He would hold a piece of gold money in each hand when the twig began to twist and dip. If the gold was under the water, the twig would pull with a very strong pull, so that he knew. If it was undecided like, he would hold silver money, and the twig told him the proper message. I watched him working many a time, and it was very wonderful."
"But he did not find the treasure," I ventured to observe.
"Ah, lad, it was no fault of his," returned the old gentleman. "The Spanish gold is scattered far and wide over the bottom of the bay, I have no doubt. Donald Glas MacLean did a very thorough job when he blew the galleon to hell."
The present Duke of Argyll, brother-in-law of the late King Edward, bears among the many and noble and resonant titles that are his by inheritance, several which recall the earlier pages of the history of the Clan Campbell, the brave days of the feudal Highlands, and the ancient rights in the Armada Galleon of Tobermory Bay. He is Baron Inverary, Mull, Morvern, and Tiry; twenty-ninth Baron of Lochow, with the Celtic title of the Cailean Mo'r, chief of the Clan Campbell, from Sir Colin Campbell, knighted in 1286; Admiral of the Western Coast and Islands, Marquis of Lorne and Kintye; Keeper of the Great Seal of Scotland and of the Castles of Dunstaffnage, Dunoon and Carvick, Hereditary High Sheriff of the County of Argyll.
He once explained how the ownership of the Florencia galleon came to his family by means of the ancient grant already quoted. The Campbells held the admiralty rights of the coast of Mull at the time of the Armada, and any wreck was lawfully theirs for this reason. The document was simply a formal confirmation of these rights. The Florencia was flotsam and jetsam to be taken by whatever chiefs held the rights of admiralty. A case involving the salmon fishing rights of a Scottish river was recently decided by virtue of a charter of admiralty rights granted by Robert the Bruce, who ruled and fought six hundred years ago.
In order to complete the documentary links of this true story of the Armada galleon, it may be of interest to quote from a letter recently received by the author from the present Duke of Argyll, in which he says:
The galleon was the ship furnished by Tuscany as her contribution to the Armada. She was called the Florencia, or City of Florence, and was commanded by Captain Pereira, a Portugese, and had a crew largely Portugese on board. We have found specimens of his plate with the Pereira arms engraved on the plate border. She carried breech loading guns on her upper deck, and you will see one of them at the Blue Coat School now removed from London to the suburbs.
On the lower deck were some guns got from Francis I at the Battle of Pavia. I have a very fine one at Inverary Castle, got from the wreck in 1740. Diving with a diving bell was commenced in 1670 and discontinued on account of civil troubles. Pereira foolishly took part in local clan disputes, helping the MacLeans of Mull against the MacDonalds. One of the MacDonalds, when a prisoner on board, is said to have blown up the vessel as she was warping out of harbor.