But evidently Snively did not know. His men came to believe that he had never before visited the place but had raised the expedition in order to have protection in his prospecting. In anger and in disappointment the expedition broke up, the men scattering to the four winds. And here my informant, the old Texas Ranger, takes up the tale. Some of the men, he says, came back home; some went on to California and to Colorado; some continued prospecting in a westerly direction. Three of them got lost in the desert, and while trying to make their way to the Rio Grande came into what must have been the Apache Canyon.
In that canyon they stumbled upon two Mexican carts loaded with gold bullion. About were the bleached skeletons of men and oxen, the remains of some old Spanish gold plundering expedition that had perished in the desert. Some men used to say that Coronado’s men must have started back with this gold. The three Texans loaded themselves with the precious metal, but before very long they had to cast it away in their struggle to reach water. Fortunately, they did reach water and were saved. Later they equipped themselves and went back into the desert to take the immense wealth. They could never find it. Landmarks are scarce in that country. Very likely, too, the shifting sands of the desert had covered the wagons with their freight of gold. They may be uncovered some day; if so, it will likely be for only a day or an hour, and the man who sees them will probably be [[99]]perishing for water, so that the sight of them and the white bones near will strike him as a terrible prophecy rather than as a life-time of hope realized.
[1] For a history of his first expedition, see any Texas history, but particularly “The Last Stage of Texan Military Operations Against Mexico, 1843,” by William Campbell Binkley, in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Vol. XXII, pp. 260–271. Perhaps a juster estimate of the motives of Snively is to be found in J. W. Wilbarger’s Indian Depredations in Texas, Austin, 1889, pp. 51–58.
An excellent account of the highly romantic second expedition is “Reminiscences of the Schnively Expedition of 1867,” by A. Whitehurst, Texas State Historical Association Quarterly, Vol. VIII, pp. 267–271. [↑]
[2] Smithwick, Noah, The Evolution of a State, p. 267. [↑]
[3] Brown, John Henry, History of Texas from 1685 to 1892, St. Louis, Vol. II, p. 291. [↑]
BURIED TREASURE LEGENDS OF MILAM COUNTY
By Louise von Blittersdorf