| Show THE BURIED TREASURE rich hoards unearthed in egypt professor oswald talks about in times of war when civilized nations are dobli obliged ed to revert to many customs of the primitive races caverns and hollow trees often tho safest banks of deposit and in some of tho the revolution ridden cour tries of spanish america the expedient of burying a pot full of loins is ia still as common as in lUnd clan tau and northern africa says tho the san SAI francisco chronicle tho persians and Hin Ilin doos docs too have moro more faith in a lonely mountain cavo cave than in any other savings bank and during the hundred years chaos following tho downfall of the roman empire billions of coins buried n 1 southern europe but especially in G beco and italy where tho bathes wl ld often no other way of baffling the ed cd of victorious barbarians the to town of the boath t coast of sicily covers tho sito site r r tho ancient ag rigen tum once tho sear tort lown alt oil medi a ay coast lands known as the great city par excelle excellence nee the ruins of that great commercial emporium were however visited only by antiquarians till 1827 when the discovery of several subterranean treasure vaults created I 1 a bonanza sensation that attracted adventurers from near and far all alon along tho the extensive templo temple ruins of tha and the tha tombs of theron and Arist agoras the ground proved to be ba honey combado with artificial caverns and the total amount cf the recovered deposits exceeded in value if not in archaeological interest es t tho the curiosities unearthed at her cu laneum and pompeii in many cases ancient tombs had been utilized for the purpose of the depositor and thousands of skeletons and coin pots were found side by side about eight years ago ago r frederick Hassau rok formerly the united states minister at ecuador wrote a book to establish the fact that the bulk of tho the treasure of the incas did not fall into the hands of the spaniards but was buried in 1519 or 1520 in a sandbank on the shores of lake Titi caca tradition says that the accidental discovery of a petrified tree in a gravel bank of the lake shore convinced a peruvian official that the depths of the bank hadjar a ages res remained undisturbed by tho the storms of the great lake and that ho he remembered that circumstance when the rapacity of the 0 spanish conqueror threatened the hoard of his royal master eight wagon loads of precious metals mostly in the form of golden trinkets are said to have been buried in stoneware pots sealed with stone plates and a cup of pitch As a precautionary measure the workmen who dug the pit were killed and their bodies weighted and thrown into the lake by a similar barbarity the are sold said to have secured tho the secret of king Al amarles Alari arles cs tomb but captain saline tho the superintendent of 0 a spanish silver mine in the state of aera vera cruz found a better method to obviate the risk of treason when v h c th the mexican insurgents ana pre prepared parea to confiscate the property of the spanish government the road to vera cruz was still in the hands of tho the royalists and before removing the silver bars to the coast tha th e wily v ily captain managed to ob obliterate litera to every trace to the mine by filling up the tha pits with rocks bloe blockading hading the roads etc and then bribed the entile entha population of th the 8 little mining village to follow him to spain since the superintendent had saved them the trouble of a forcible expulsion the mexican patriots proceeded to take possession of the wo works r ks that ranked seventh in importance im portana 0 among the twenty t two wa chief mines of mexico the furnace and the nammer works work were found in tolerably good repair and a plain road led up tow toward ard the tha silver pi pita ts in the mountains A guide from the indian peasant population of the neighborhood was pressed into service and agreed to take them up to a mountain ridge where blasting and quarrying had been going on for time out of his memory subsequent negotiations with the span in led to fo no dif definite anite resul d j search for the lost mil lly abandoned to private enterprise antei prise year after year operators from the sierra do da perote explored the uplands in all directions and actually discovered a number of promising asin silver veins but these bonanzas proved too inaccessible or failed pay the lalor labor of this the miner the veta real like the blue lead of yubi yuba con conerity rity still evades the prospectors ectore and ana it is probable that the eacret 1 I 1 thi old silver mine has been buried with its last spanish director |
