 | Tales of a traveller |  |
THE MONEY DIGGERS.
FOUND AMONG THE PAPERS OF THE LATE
DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER.
HELL GATE.
About six miles from the renowned city ot
the Manhattoes, and in that Sound, or arm of
the sea, which passes between the main land
and Nassau or Long-Island, there is a narrow
strait, where the current is violently compressed
between shouldering promontories, and horribly
irritated and perplexed by rocks and shoals.
Being at the best of times a very violent, hasty
current, it takes these impediments in mighty
dudgeon; boiling in whirlpools; brawling and
fretting in ripples and breakers; and, in short, indulging
in all kinds of wrong-headed paroxysms.
At such times, wo to any unlucky vessel that
ventures within its clutches.
This termagant humour is said to prevail only
at half tides. At low water it is as pacific as
any other stream. As the tide rises, it begins
for more water; but when the tide is
full it relapses again into quiet, and for a time
seems almost to sleep as soundly as an alderman
after dinner. It may be compared to an inveterate
hard drinker, who is a peaceable fellow
enough when he has no liquor at all, or when
he has a skin full, but when half seas over plays
the very devil.
This mighty blustering bullying little strait
was a place of great difficulty and danger to the
Dutch navigators of ancient days; hectoring
their tub-built barks in a most unruly style; whirling
them about, in a manner to make any but a
Dutchman giddy, and not unfrequently stranding
them upon rocks and reefs. Whereupon
out of sheer spleen they denominated it Hellegat
(literally Hell Gut) and solemnly gave it over
to the devil. This appellation has since been
aptly rendered into English by the name of Hell
Gate; and into nonsense by the name of Hurl
Gate, according to certain foreign intruders who
neither understood Dutch nor English.—May
St. Nicholas confound them!
From this strait to the city of the Manhattoes
the borders of the Sound are greatly diversified:
in one part, on the eastern shore of the island of
Mannahata and opposite Blackwell's Island,
being very much broken and indented by rocky
nooks, overhung with trees which give them
a wild and romantic look.
The flux and reflux of the tide through this
part of the Sound is extremely rapid, and the navigation
troublesome, by reason of the whirling
eddies and counter currents. I speak this from
experience, having been much of a navigator of
these small seas in my boyhood, and having more
than once run the risk of shipwreck and drowning
in the course of divers holyday voyages, to
which in common with the Dutch urchins I was
rather prone.
In the midst of this perilous strait, and hard by
a group of rocks called “the Hen and Chickens,”
there lay in my boyish days the wreck of a vessel
which had been entangled in the whirlpools and
stranded during a storm. There was some wild
story about this being the wreck of a pirate, and
I cannot now recollect. Indeed, the desolate look
of this forlorn hulk, and the fearful place where
it lay rotting, were sufficient to awaken strange
notions concerning it. A row of timber heads,
blackened by time, peered above the surface
at high water; but at low tide a considerable
part of the hull was bare, and its great ribs or
timbers, partly stripped of their planks, looked
like the skeleton of some sea monster. There
was also the stump of a mast, with a few ropes
and blocks swinging about and whistling in the
wind, while the sea gull wheeled and screamed
around this melancholy carcass.
The stories connected with this wreck made it
an object of great awe to my boyish fancy; but in
truth the whole neighbourhood was full of fable
and romance for me, abounding with traditions
about pirates, hobgoblins, and buried money. As
I grew to more mature years I made many researches
after the truth of these strange traditions;
for I have always been a curious investigator
of the valuable but obscure branches of the
difficulty, however, in arriving at any precise information.
In seeking to dig up one fact it is
incredible the number of fables which I unearthed;
for the whole course of the Sound seemed
in my younger days to be like the straits of Pylorus
of yore, the very region of fiction. I will
say nothing of the Devil's Stepping Stones, by
which that arch fiend made his retreat from
Connecticut to Long-Island, seeing that the subject
is likely to be learnedly treated by a worthy
friend and contemporary historian[1] whom I have
furnished with particulars thereof. Neither will
I say any thing of the black man in a three-cornered
hat, seated in the stern of a jolly boat who
used to be seen about Hell Gate in stormy
weather; and who went by the name of the
Pirate's Spuke, or Pirate's Ghost, because I
never could meet with any person of stanch credibility
unless it were the widow of Manus Conklin the
blacksmith of Frogs Neck; but then, poor woman,
she was a little purblind, and might have been
mistaken; though they said she saw farther than
other folks in the dark.
All this, however, was but little satisfactory
in regard to the tales of buried money about
which I was most curious; and the following
was all that I could for a long time collect that
had any thing like an air of authenticity.
For a very interesting account of the Devil and his Stepping
Stones, see the learned memoir read before the New-York Historical
Society since the death of Mr. Knickerbocker, by his
friend, an eminent jurist of the place.
KIDD THE PIRATE.
In old times, just after the territory of the
New Netherlands had been wrested from the
hands of their High Mightinesses the Lords
States General of Holland, by Charles the Second,
and while it was as yet in an unquiet state,
the province was a favourite resort of adventurers
of all kinds, and particularly of buccaneers.
These were piratical rovers of the deep, who made
sad work in times of peace among the Spanish
settlements and Spanish merchant ships. They
took advantage of the easy access to the harbour
of the Manhattoes, and of the laxity of its scarcely
organized government, to make it a kind of rendezvous,
where they might dispose of their ill-gotten
spoils, and concert new depredations.
country and clime, might be seen swaggering,
in open day, about the streets of the little burgh;
elbowing its quiet Mynheers; trafficking away
their rich outlandish plunder, at half price, to the
wary merchant, and then squandering their gains
in taverns; drinking, gambling, singing, swearing,
shouting, and astounding the neighbourhood
with sudden brawl and ruffian revelry.
At length the indignation of government was
aroused, and it was determined to ferret out this
vermin brood from the colonies. Great consternation
took place among the pirates on finding
justice in pursuit of them, and their old haunts
turned to places of peril. They secreted their
money and jewels in lonely out of the way
places; buried them about the wild shores of the
rivers and sea coast, and dispersed themselves
over the face of the country.
Among the agents employed to hunt them by
sea was the renowned Captain Kidd. He had
long been a hardy adventurer, a kind of equivocal
borderer, half trader, half smuggler, with a
for some time among the pirates, lurking about
the seas in a little rakish, musquito built vessel,
prying into all kinds of odd places, as busy as a
Mother Cary's chicken in a gale of wind.
This non-descript personage was pitched upon
by government as the very man to command a
vessel fitted out to cruise against the pirates, since
he knew all their haunts and lurking places:
acting upon the shrewd old maxim of “setting a
rogue to catch a rogue.” Kidd accordingly sailed
from New-York in the Adventure galley, gallantly
armed and duly commissioned, and steered
his course to the Madeiras, to Bonavista, to Madagascar,
and cruised at the entrance of the Red
Sea. Instead, however, of making war upon the
pirates he turned pirate himself: captured friend
or foe; enriched himself with the spoils of a
wealthy Indiaman, manned by Moors, though
commanded by an Englishman, and having disposed
of his prize, had the hardihood to return
to Boston, laden with wealth, with a crew of his
comrades at his heels.
His fame had preceded him. The alarm was
given of the reappearance of this cut-purse of
the ocean. Measures were taken for his arrest;
but he had time, it is said, to bury the greater
part of his treasures. He even attempted to draw
his sword and defend himself when arrested;
but was secured and thrown into prison, with
several of his followers. They were carried to
England in a frigate, where they were tried,
condemned and hanged at Execution Dock.
Kidd died hard, for the rope with which he was
first tied up broke with his weight, and he tumbled
to the ground; he was tied up a second time,
and effectually; from whence arose the story
of his having been twice hanged.
Such is the main outline of Kidd's history; but
it has given birth to an innumerable progeny of
traditions. The circumstance of his having
buried great treasures of gold and jewels after
returning from his cruising set the brains of
all the good people along the coast in a ferment.
There were rumours on rumours of great sums
found here and there; sometimes in one part of
rocks bearing mysterious marks, doubtless indicating
the spots where treasure lay hidden.
Of coins found with Moorish characters, the
plunder of Kidd's eastern prize, but which the
common people took for diabolical or magic
inscriptions.
Some reported the spoils to have been buried
in solitary unsettled places, about Plymouth and
Cape Cod; many other parts of the eastern coast,
also, and various places in Long-Island Sound,
have been gilded by these rumours, and have
been ransacked by adventurous money diggers.
In all the stories of these enterprizes the devil
played a conspicuous part. Either he was conciliated
by ceremonies and invocations, or some
bargain or compact was made with him. Still he
was sure to play the money diggers some slippery
trick. Some had succeeded so far as to touch
the iron chest which contained the treasure, when
some baffling circumstance was sure to take
place. Either the earth would fall in and fill up
the pit, or some direful noise or apparition would
from the place; and sometimes the devil himself
would appear and bear off the prize from
their very grasp; and if they visited the place on
the next day not a trace would be seen of their
labours of the preceding night.
Such were the vague rumours which for a
long time tantalized without gratifying my curiosity
on the interesting subject of these pirate
traditions. There is nothing in this world so
hard to get at as truth. I sought among my
favourite sources of authentic information, the
oldest inhabitants, and particularly the old Dutch
wives of the province; but though I flatter
myself I am better versed than most men in
the curious history of my native province, yet
for a long time my inquiries were unattended
with any substantial result.
At length it happened, one calm day in the
latter part of summer, that I was relaxing myself
from the toils of severe study by a day's amusement
in fishing in those waters which had been
the favourite resort of my boyhood. I was in
native city. Our sport was indifferent; the fish
did not bite freely; and we had frequently
changed our fishing ground, without bettering
our luck. We at length anchored close under a
ledge of rocky coast, on the eastern side of the
island of Mannahata. It was a still, warm day.
The stream whirled and dimpled by us without
a wave or even a ripple, and every thing was so
calm and quiet, that it was almost startling when
the kingfisher would pitch himself from the
branch of some dry tree, and after suspending
himself for a moment in the air to take his aim,
would souse into the smooth water after his
prey. While we were lolling in our boat, half
drowsy with the warm stillness of the day and
the dullness of our sport, one of our party, a
worthy alderman, was overtaken by a slumber,
and as he dozed suffered the sinker of his dropline
to lie upon the bottom of the river. On
waking he found he had caught something of
importance, from the weight; on drawing it to
the surface, we were much surprised to find a
which from its rusted condition, and its stock
being worm eaten, and covered with barnacles,
appeared to have been a long time under water.
The unexpected appearance of this document of
warfare occasioned much speculation among my
pacific companions. One supposed it to have
fallen there during the revolutionary war. Another,
from the peculiarity of its fashion, attributed
it to the voyagers in the earliest days of the settlement;
perchance to the renowned Adrian Block
who explored the Sound and discovered Block
Island, since so noted for its cheese. But a
third, after regarding it for some time, pronounced
it to be of veritable Spanish workmanship.
“I'll warrant,” said he, “if this pistol could
talk it would tell strange stories of hard fights
among the Spanish Dons. I've not a doubt but
it's a relique of the buccaneers of old times.”
“Like enough,” said another of the party.
“There was Bradish the pirate, who at the time
Lord Bellamont made such a stir after the buccaneers,
buried money and jewels some where
there was Captain Kidd—”
“Ah, that Kidd was a daring dog,” said an
iron-faced Cape Cod whaler. “There's a fine
old song about him, all to the tune of
As I sailed, as I sailed.'
by burying the bible;
As I sailed, as I sailed,
And I buried it in the sand,
As I sailed.'
set some store by it out of sheer curiosity. Ah,
well, there's an odd story I have heard about one
Tom Walker, who they say dug up some of
Kidd's buried money; and as the fish don't seem
to bite at present, I'll tell it to you to pass away
time.”
THE DEVIL
AND
TOM WALKER.
A few miles from Boston, in Massachusetts,
there is a deep inlet winding several miles into
the interior of the country from Charles Bay,
and terminating in a thickly wooded swamp, or
morass. On one side of this inlet is a beautiful
dark grove; on the opposite side the land rises
abruptly from the water's edge, into a high ridge
on which grow a few scattered oaks of great age
and immense size. It was under one of these
gigantic trees, according to old stories, that Kidd
the pirate buried his treasure. The inlet allowed
a facility to bring the money in a boat secretly
elevation of the place permitted a good look out
to be kept that no one was at hand, while the
remarkable trees formed good landmarks by
which the place might easily be found again.
The old stories add, moreover, that the devil
presided at the hiding of the money, and took it
under his guardianship; but this, it is well known,
he always does with buried treasure, particularly
when it has been ill gotten. Be that as it may,
Kidd never returned to recover his wealth; being
shortly after seized at Boston, sent out to England,
and there hanged for a pirate.
About the year 1727, just at the time when
earthquakes were prevalent in New-England,
and shook many tall sinners down upon their
knees, there lived near this place a meagre miserly
fellow of the name of Tom Walker. He
had a wife as miserly as himself; they were so
miserly that they even conspired to cheat each
other. Whatever the woman could lay hands
on she hid away: a hen could not cackle but
she was on the alert to secure the new-laid egg.
detect her secret hoards, and many and fierce
were the conflicts that took place about what
ought to have been common property. They
lived in a forlorn-looking house, that stood alone
and had an air of starvation. A few straggling
savin trees, emblems of sterility, grew near it;
no smoke ever curled from its chimney; no traveller
stopped at its door. A miserable horse,
whose ribs were as articulate as the bars of a
gridiron, stalked about a field where a thin carpet
of moss, scarcely covering the ragged beds of
pudding stone, tantalized and balked his hunger;
and sometimes he would lean his head over
the fence, look piteously at the passer by, and
seem to petition deliverance from this land of
famine. The house and its inmates had altogether
a bad name. Tom's wife was a tall termagant,
fierce of temper, loud of tongue, and strong
of arm. Her voice was often heard in wordy
warfare with her husband; and his face sometimes
showed signs that their conflicts were not
confined to words. No one ventured, however,
shrunk within himself at the horrid clamour and
clapper-clawing; eyed the den of discord askance,
and hurried on his way, rejoicing, if a bachelor,
in his celibacy.
One day that Tom Walker had been to a distant
part of the neighbourhood, he took what he
considered a short cut homewards through the
swamp. Like most short cuts, it was an ill
chosen route. The swamp was thickly grown
with great gloomy pines and hemlocks, some of
them ninety feet high; which made it dark at
noon-day, and a retreat for all the owls of the
neighbourhood. It was full of pits and quagmires,
partly covered with weeds and mosses;
where the green surface often betrayed the traveller
into a gulf of black smothering mud;
there were also dark and stagnant pools, the
abodes of the tadpole, the bull-frog, and the water
snake, and where trunks of pines and hemlocks
lay half drowned, half rotting, looking like
alligators, sleeping in the mire.
Tom had long been picking his way cautiously
tuft to tuft of rushes and roots which afforded
precarious footholds among deep sloughs; or
pacing carefully, like a cat, along the prostrate
trunks of trees; startled now and then by the
sudden screaming of the bittern, or the quacking
of a wild duck, rising on the wing from some
solitary pool. At length he arrived at a piece of
firm ground, which ran out like a peninsula into
the deep bosom of the swamp. It had been one
of the strong holds of the Indians during their
wars with the first colonists. Here they had
thrown up a kind of fort which they had looked
upon as almost impregnable, and had used as a
place of refuge for their squaws and children.
Nothing remained of the Indian fort but a few embankments
gradually sinking to the level of the
surrounding earth, and already overgrown in part
by oaks and other forest trees, the foliage of
which formed a contrast to the dark pines and
hemlocks of the swamp.
It was late in the dusk of evening that Tom
Walker reached the old fort, and he paused there
would have felt unwilling to linger in this lonely
melancholy place, for the common people had
a bad opinion of it from the stories handed down
from the time of the Indian wars; when it was
asserted that the savages held incantations here
and made sacrifices to the evil spirit. Tom
Walker, however, was not a man to be troubled
with any fears of the kind.
He reposed himself for some time on the trunk
of a fallen hemlock, listening to the boding cry
of the tree toad, and delving with his walking
staff into a mound of black mould at his feet.
As he turned up the soil unconsciously, his staff
struck against something hard. He raked it out
of the vegetable mould, and lo! a cloven skull
with an Indian tomahawk buried deep in it, lay
before him. The rust on the weapon showed
the time that had elapsed since this death blow
had been given. It was a dreary memento of
the fierce struggle that had taken place in this
last foothold of the Indian warriors.
“Humph!” said Tom Walker, as he gave the
skull a kick to shake the dirt from it.
“Let that skull alone!” said a gruff voice.
Tom lifted up his eyes and beheld a great
black man, seated directly opposite him on the
stump of a tree. He was exceedingly surprised,
having neither seen nor heard any one approach,
and he was still more perplexed on observing, as
well as the gathering gloom would permit, that
the stranger was neither negro nor Indian. It
is true, he was dressed in a rude, half Indian
garb, and had a red belt or sash swathed round
his body, but his face was neither black nor copper
colour, but swarthy and dingy and begrimed
with soot, as if he had been accustomed to toil
among fires and forges. He had a shock of
coarse black hair, that stood out from his head
in all directions; and bore an axe on his shoulder.
He scowled for a moment at Tom with a pair
of great red eyes.
“What are you doing in my grounds?” said
the black man, with a hoarse growling voice.
“Your grounds?” said Tom, with a sneer;
“no more your grounds than mine: they belong
to Deacon Peabody.”
“Deacon Peabody be d—d,” said the stranger,
“as I flatter myself he will be, if he does
not look more to his own sins and less to his
neighbour's. Look yonder, and see how Deacon
Peabody is faring.”
Tom looked in the direction that the stranger
pointed, and beheld one of the great trees, fair
and flourishing without, but rotten at the core,
and saw that it had been nearly hewn through,
so that the first high wind was likely to below it
down. On the bark of the tree was scored the
name of Deacon Peabody. He now looked
round and found most of the tall trees marked
with the name of some great men of the colony,
and all more or less scored by the axe. The
one on which he had been seated, and which had
evidently just been hewn down, bore the name
of Crowninshield; and he recollected a mighty
rich man of that name, who made a vulgar display
acquired by buccaneering.
“He's just ready for burning!” said the black
man, with a growl of triumph. “You see I am
likely to have a good stock of firewood for winter.”
“But what right have you,” said Tom, “to
cut down Deacon Peabody's timber?”
“The right of prior claim,” said the other.
“This woodland belonged to me long before one
of your white-faced race poot foot upon the
soil.”
“And pray, who are you, if I may be so
bold?” said Tom.
“Oh, I go by various names. I am the Wild
Huntsman in some countries; the Black Miner
in others. In this neighbourhood I am known
by the name of the Black Woodsman. I am he
to whom the red men devoted this spot, and now
and then roasted a white man by way of sweet
smelling sacrifice. Since the red men have been
exterminated by you white savages, I amuse myself
by presiding at the persecutions of quakers
prompter of slave dealers, and the grand master
of the Salem witches.”
“The upshot of all which is, that, if I mistake
not,” said Tom, sturdily, “you are he commonly
called Old Scratch.”
“The same at your service!” replied the
black man, with a half civil nod.
Such was the opening of this interview, according
to the old story, though it has almost too
familiar an air to be credited. One would think
that to meet with such a singular personage in
this wild lonely place, would have shaken any
man's nerves: but Tom was a hard-minded fellow,
not easily daunted, and he had lived so long
with a termagant wife, that he did not even fear
the devil.
It is said that after this commencement, they
had a long and earnest conversation together, as
Tom returned homewards. The black man told
him of great sums of money which had been buried
by Kidd the pirate, under the oak trees on
the high ridge not far from the morass. All these
power, so that none could find them but such
as propitiated his favour. These he offered to
place within Tom Walker's reach, having conceived
an especial kindness for him: but they
were to be had only on certain conditions.
What these conditions were, may easily be surmised,
though Tom never disclosed them publicly.
They must have been very hard, for he
required time to think of them, and he was not
a man to stick at trifles where money was in
view. When they had reached the edge of the
swamp the stranger paused.
“What proof have I that all you have been
telling me is true?” said Tom.
“There is my signature,” said the black man,
pressing his finger on Tom's forehead. So saying,
he turned off among the thickets of the
swamp, and seemed, as Tom said, to go down,
down, down, into the earth, until nothing but his
head and shoulders could be seen, and so on until
he totally disappeared.
When Tom reached home he found the black
which nothing could obliterate.
The first news his wife had to tell him was the
sudden death of Absalom Crowninshield the rich
buccaneer. It was announced in the papers with
the usual flourish, that “a great man had fallen
in Israel.”
Tom recollected the tree which his black friend
had just hewn down, and which was ready for
burning. “Let the freebooter roast,” said Tom,
“who cares!” He now felt convinced that all
he had heard and seen was no illusion.
He was not prone to let his wife into his confidence;
but as this was an uneasy secret, he willingly
shared it with her. All her avarice was
awakened at the mention of hidden gold, and she
urged her husband to comply with the black
man's terms and secure what would make them
wealthy for life. However Tom might have felt
disposed to sell himself to the devil, he was determined
not to do so to oblige his wife; so he
flatly refused out of the mere spirit of contradiction.
Many and bitter were the quarrels they
more resolute was Tom not to be demned to
please her. At length she determined to drive
the bargain on her own account, and if she succeeded,
to keep all the gain to herself.
Being of the same fearless temper as her husband,
she sat off for the old Indian fort towards
the close of a summer's day. She was many
hours absent. When she came back she was reserved
and sullen in her replies. She spoke something
of a black man whom she had met about
twilight, hewing at the root of a tall tree. He
was sulky, however, and would not come to terms;
she was to go again with a propitiatory offering,
but what it was she forebore to say.
The next evening she sat off again for the
swamp, with her apron heavily laden. Tom
waited and waited for her, but in vain: midnight
came, but she did not make her appearance;
morning, noon, night returned, but still she
did not come. Tom now grew uneasy for
her safety; especially as he found she had carried
off in her apron the silver teapot and
Another night elapsed, another morning came;
but no wife. In a word, she was never heard of
more.
What was her real fate nobody knows, in consequence
of so many pretending to know. It is
one of those facts that have become confounded
by a variety of historians. Some asserted that she
lost her way among the tangled mazes of the
swamp and sunk into some pit or slough; others,
more uncharitable, hinted that she had eloped with
the household booty, and made off to some other
province; while others assert that the tempter
had decoyed her into a dismal quagmire on top
of which her hat was found lying. In confirmation
of this, it was said a great black man
with an axe on his shoulder was seen late that
very evening coming out of the swamp, carrying
a bundle tied in a check apron, with an air of
surly triumph.
The most current and probable story, however,
observes that Tom Walker grew so anxious
about the fate of his wife and his property that
fort. During a long summer's afternoon he
searched about the gloomy place, but no wife was
to be seen. He called her name repeatedly, but
she was no where to be heard. The bittern alone
responded to his voice, as he flew screaming by;
or the bull frog croaked dolefully from a neighbouring
pool. At length, it is said, just in the
brown hour of twilight, when the owls began to
hoot and the bats to flit about, his attention was
attracted by the clamour of carrion crows that
were hovering about a cypress tree. He looked
and beheld a bundle tied in a check apron and
hanging in the branches of the tree; with a great
vulture perched hard by, as if keeping watch upon
it. He leaped with joy, for he recognized his
wife's apron, and supposed it to contain the
household valuables.
“Let us get hold of the property,” said he, consolingly
to himself, “and we will endeavour to
do without the woman.”
As he scrambled up the tree the vulture spread
its wide wings, and sailed off screaming into the
check apron, but, woful sight! found nothing
but a heart and liver tied up in it.
Such, according to the most authentic old story,
was all that was to be found of Tom's wife.
She had probably attempted to deal with the
black man as she had been accustomed to deal
with her husband; but though a female scold is
generally considered a match for the devil, yet in
this instance she appears to have had the worst
of it. She must have died game however;
from the part that remained unconquered. Indeed,
it is said Tom noticed many prints of cloven
feet deeply stamped about the tree, and several
handsful of hair, that looked as if they had
been plucked from the coarse black shock of the
woodsman. Tom knew his wife's prowess by
experience. He shrugged his shoulders as he
looked at the signs of a fierce clapper-clawing.
“Egad,” said he to himself, “Old Scratch must
have had a tough time of it!”
Tom consoled himself for the loss of his property
by the loss of his wife; for he was a
like gratitude towards the black woodsman, who
he considered had done him a kindness. He
sought, therefore, to cultivate a farther acquaintance
with him, but for some time without success;
the old black legs played shy, for whatever
people may think, he is not always to be had for
calling for; he knows how to play his cards
when pretty sure of his game.
At length, it is said, when delay had whetted
Tom's eagerness to the quick, and prepared him
to agree to any thing rather than not gain the
promised treasure, he met the black man one
evening in his usual woodman dress, with his
axe on his shoulder, sauntering along the edge
of the swamp, and humming a tune. He affected
to receive Tom's advance with great indifference,
made brief replies, and went on humming
his tune.
By degrees, however, Tom brought him to
business, and they began to haggle about the
terms on which the former was to have the
pirate's treasure. There was one condition
understood in all cases where the devil grants
favours; but there were others about which,
though of less importance, he was inflexibly obstinate.
He insisted that the money found through
his means should be employed in his service. He
proposed, therefore, that Tom should employ it
in the black traffick; that is to say, that he should
fit out a slave ship. This, however, Tom resolutely
refused; he was bad enough in all conscience;
but the devil himself could not tempt
him to turn slave dealer.
Finding Tom so squeamish on this point, he
did not insist upon it, but proposed instead that
he should turn usurer; the devil being extremely
anxious for the increase of usurers, looking
upon them as his peculiar people.
To this no objections were made, for it was
just to Tom's taste.
“You shall open a broker's shop in Boston
next month,” said the black man.
“I'll do it to-morrow, if you wish,” said Tom
Walker.
“You shall lend money at two per cent. a
month.”
“Egad, I'll charge four!” replied Tom
Walker.
“You shall extort bonds, foreclose mortgages,
drive the merchant to bankruptcy—”
“I'll drive him to the d—l,” cried Tom
Walker, eagerly.
“You are the usurer for my money!” said the
black legs, with delight. “When will you want
the rhino?”
“This very night.”
“Done!” said the devil.
“Done!” said Tom Walker.—So they shook
hands, and struck a bargain.
A few days' time saw Tom Walker seated behind
his desk in a counting house in Boston. His
reputation for a ready moneyed man, who would
lend money out for a good consideration, soon
spread abroad. Every body remembers the days
of Governor Belcher, when money was particularly
scarce. It was a time of paper credit. The
country had been deluged with government bills;
there had been a rage for speculating; the people
had run mad with schemes for new settlements;
for building cities in the wilderness; land jobbers
went about with maps of grants, and townships,
and Eldorados, lying nobody knew where, but
which every body was ready to purchase. In a
word, the great speculating fever which breaks
out every now and then in the country, had raged
to an alarming degree, and every body was
dreaming of making sudden fortunes from nothing.
As usual the fever had subsided; the
dream had gone off, and the imaginary fortunes
with it; the patients were left in doleful plight,
and the whole country resounded with the consequent
cry of “hard times.”
At this propitious time of public distress did
Tom Walker set up as a usurer in Boston. His
door was soon thronged by customers. The
needy and the adventurous; the gambling speculator;
the dreaming land jobber; the thriftless
tradesman; the merchant with cracked credit;
in short, every one driven to raise money by desperate
Tom Walker.
Thus Tom was the universal friend of the
needy, and he acted like a “friend in need;”
that is to say, he always exacted good pay and
good security. In proportion to the distress of
the applicant was the hardness of his terms. He
accumulated bonds and mortgages; gradually
squeezed his customers closer and closer; and
sent them at length, dry as a sponge from his
door.
In this way he made money hand over hand;
became a rich and mighty man, and exalted his
cocked hat upon change. He built himself, as
usual, a vast house, out of ostentation; but left
the greater part of it unfinished and unfurnished
out of parsimony. He even set up a carriage
in the fullness of his vain glory, though he nearly
starved the horses which drew it; and as the
ungreased wheels groaned and screeched on the
axle trees, you would have thought you heard
the souls of the poor debtors he was squeezing.
As Tom waxed old, however, he grew thoughtful.
world, he began to feel anxious about those of
the next. He thought with regret on the bargain
he had made with his black friend, and set
his wits to work to cheat him out of the conditions.
He became, therefore, all of a sudden,
a violent church goer. He prayed loudly and strenuously
as if heaven were to be taken by force of
lungs. Indeed, one might always tell when he
had sinned most during the week, by the clamour
of his Sunday devotion. The quiet christians
who had been modestly and steadfastly travelling
Zionward, were struck with self reproach at seeing
themselves so suddenly outstripped in their career
by this new-made convert. Tom was as
rigid in religious, as in money matters; he was a
stern supervisor and censurer of his neighbours,
and seemed to think every sin entered up to
their account became a credit on his own side
of the page. He even talked of the expediency
of reviving the persecution of quakers and anabaptists.
In a word, Tom's zeal became as notorious
as his riches.
Still, in spite of all this strenuous attention to
forms, Tom had a lurking dread that the devil,
after all, would have his due. That he might
not be taken unawares, therefore, it is said he
always carried a small bible in his coat pocket.
He had also a great folio bible on his counting-house
desk, and would frequently be found reading
it when people called on business; on such occasions
he would lay his green spectacles on the
book, to mark the place, while he turned round
to drive some usurious bargain.
Some say that Tom grew a little crack brained
in his old days, and that fancying his end approaching,
he had his horse new shod, saddled
and bridled, and buried with his feet uppermost;
because he supposed that at the last day the world
would be turned upside down; in which case he
should find his horse standing ready for mounting,
and he was determined at the worst to give his
old friend a run for it. This, however, is probably
a mere old wives fable. If he really did
take such a precaution it was totally superfluous;
closes his story in the following manner.
On one hot afternoon in the dog days, just as
a terrible black thundergust was coming up, Tom
sat in his counting house in his white linen cap and
India silk morning gown. He was on the point
of foreclosing a mortgage, by which he would
complete the ruin of an unlucky land speculator
for whom he had professed the greatest friendship.
The poor land jobber begged him to grant
a few months indulgence. Tom had grown testy
and irritated and refused another day.
“My family will be ruined and brought upon
the parish,” said the land jobber. “Charity begins
at home,” replied Tom, “I must take care
of myself in these hard times.”
“You have made so much money out of me,”
said the speculator.
Tom lost his patience and his piety—“The
devil take me,” said he, “if I have made a farthing!”
Just then there were three loud knocks at the
street door. He stepped out to see who was
which neighed and stamped with impatience.
“Tom, you're come for!” said the black fellow,
gruffly. Tom shrunk back, but too late. He
had left his little bible at the bottom of his coat
pocket, and his big bible on the desk buried under
the mortgage he was about to forclose: never
was sinner taken more unawares. The black
man whisked him like a child astride the horse
and away he galloped in the midst of a thunder
storm. The clerks stuck their pens behind their
ears and stared after him from the windows.
Away went Tom Walker, dashing down the
streets; his white cap bobbing up and down;
his morning gown fluttering in the wind, and
his steed striking fire out of the pavement at every
bound. When the clerks turned to look for the
black man he had disappeared.
Tom Walker never returned to foreclose the
mortgage. A countryman who lived on the
borders of the swamp, reported that in the height
of the thunder gust he had heard a great clattering
of hoofs and a howling along the road,
caught sight of a figure, such as I have described,
on a horse that galloped like mad across the
fields, over the hills and down into the black
hemlock swamp towards the old Indian fort;
and that shortly after a thunderbolt fell in that
direction which seemed to set the whole forest
in a blaze.
The good people of Boston shook their heads
and shrugged their shoulders, but had been so
much accustomed to witches and goblins and
tricks of the devil in all kinds of shapes from
the first settlement of the colony, that they were
not so much horror struck as might have been
expected. Trustees were appointed to take
charge of Tom's effects. There was nothing,
however, to administer upon. On searching
his coffers all his bonds and mortgages were
found reduced to cinders. In place of gold and
silver his iron chest was filled with chips and
shavings; two skeletons lay in his stable instead
of his half starved horses, and the very next day
his great house took fire and was burnt to the
ground.
Such was the end of Tom Walker and his ill
gotten wealth. Let all griping money brokers
lay this story to heart. The truth of it is not to
be doubted. The very hole under the oak trees,
from whence he dug Kidd's money is to be seen
to this day; and the neighbouring swamp and
old Indian fort is often haunted in stormy nights
by a figure on horseback, in a morning gown and
white cap, which is doubtless the troubled spirit
of the usurer. In fact, the story has resolved itself
into a proverb, and is the origin of that popular
saying, prevalent throughout New-England;
of “The Devil and Tom Walker.”
Such, as nearly as I can recollect, was the tenor
of the tale told by the Cape Cod whaler.
There were divers trivial particulars which I
have omitted, and which whiled away the morning
very pleasantly, until the time of tide favourable
for fishing being passed, it was proposed
under the trees, until the noon-tide heat
should have abated.
We accordingly landed on a delectable part of
the island of Mannahatta, in that shady and embowered
tract formerly under dominion of the
ancient family of the Hardenbrooks. It was a
spot well known to me in the course of the aquatic
expeditions of my boyhood. Not far from
where we landed, was an old Dutch family vault,
in the side of a bank, which had been an object
of great awe and fable among my school boy associates.
There were several mouldering coffins
within; but what gave it a fearful interest
with us, was its being connected in our minds
with the pirate wreck which lay among the rocks
of Hell Gate. There were also stories of smuggling
connected with it, particularly during a
time that this retired spot was owned by a noted
burgher called Ready Money Prevost; a man
of whom it was whispered that he had many
and mysterious dealings with parts beyond seas.
All these things, however, had been jumbled
such themes are mingled up in the tales of boyhood.
While I was musing upon these matters my companions
had spread a repast, from the contents of
our well-stored pannier, and we solaced ourselves
during the warm sunny hours of mid-day under
the shade of a broad chesnut, on the cool grassy
carpet that swept down to the water's edge.
While lolling on the grass I summoned up the
dusky recollections of my boyhood respecting
this place, and repeated them like the imperfectly
remembered traces of a dream, for the entertainment
of my companions. When I had finished
a worthy old burgher, John Josse Vandermoere,
the same who once related to me the
adventures of Dolph Heyliger, broke silence and
observed, that he recollected a story about money
digging which occurred in this very neighbourhood.
As we knew him to be one of the
most authentic narrators of the province we begged
him to let us have the particulars, and accordingly,
while we refreshed ourselves with a
John Josse Vandermoere related the following
tale.
WOLFERT WEBBER,
OR
GOLDEN DREAMS.
In the year of grace one thousand seven hundred
and—blank—for I do not remember the
precise date; however, it was somewhere in the
early part of the last century, there lived in the
ancient city of the Manhattoes a worthy burgher,
Wolfert Webber by name. He was descended
from old Cobus Webber of the Brille in Holland,
one of the original settlers, famous for introducing
the cultivation of cabbages, and who came
over to the province during the protectorship of
Oloffe Van Kortlandt, otherwise called the
Dreamer.
The field in which Cobus Webber first planted
himself and his cabbages had remained ever
since in the family, who continued in the same
line of husbandry, with that praiseworthy perseverance
for which our Dutch burghers are noted.
The whole family genius, during several
generations, was devoted to the study and development
of this one noble vegetable; and to this
concentration of intellect may doubtless be ascribed
the prodigious size and renown to which
the Webber cabbages attained.
The Webber dynasty continued in uninterrupted
succession; and never did a line give more
unquestionable proofs of legitimacy. The eldest
son succeeded to the looks, as well as the territory
of his sire; and had the portraits of this line
of tranquil potentates been taken, they would
have presented a row of heads marvellously resembling
in shape and magnitude the vegetables
over which they reigned.
The seat of government continued unchanged
in the family mansion:—a Dutch-built house,
with a front, or rather gabel end of yellow brick,
weathercock at the top. Every thing about the
building bore the air of long-settled ease and
security. Flights of martins peopled the little
coops nailed against the walls, and swallows
built their nests under the eaves; and every one
knows that these house-loving birds bring good
luck to the dwelling where they take up their
abode. In a bright sunny morning in early
summer, it was delectable to hear their cheerful
notes, as they sported about in the pure sweet
air, chirping forth, as it were, the greatness and
prosperity of the Webbers.
Thus quietly and comfortably did this excellent
family vegetate under the shade of a mighty
buttonwood tree, which by little and little grew
so great as entirely to overshadow their palace.
The city gradually spread its suburbs round their
domain. Houses sprung up to interrupt their
prospects. The rural lanes in the vicinity began
to grow into the bustle and populousness of
streets; in short, with all the habits of rustic life
they began to find themselves the inhabitants of
hereditary character, and hereditary possessions,
with all the tenacity of petty German princes in
the midst of the Empire. Wolfert was the last
of the line, and succeeded to the patriarchal bench
at the door, under the family tree, and swayed the
sceptre of his fathers, a kind of rural potentate
in the midst of a metropolis.
To share the cares and sweets of sovereignty,
he had taken unto himself a help mate, one of
that excellent kind, called stirring women; that is
to say, she was one of those notable little housewives
who are always busy when there is nothing
to do. Her activity, however, took one particular
direction; her whole life seemed devoted to intense
knitting; whether at home or abroad;
walking, or sitting, her needles were continually
in motion, and it is even affirmed that by her unwearied
industry she very nearly supplied her
household with stockings throughout the year.
This worthy couple were blessed with one daughter,
who was brought up with great tenderness
and care; uncommon pains had been taken with
variety of way; make all kinds of pickles and
preserves, and mark her own name on a sampler.
The influence of her taste was seen also in the
family garden, where the ornamental began to
mingle with the useful; whole rows of fiery marigolds
and splendid holly-hocks bordered the cabbage
beds; and gigantic sun flowers lolled their
broad jolly faces over the fences, seeming to ogle
most affectionately the passers by.
Thus reigned and vegetated Wolfert Webber
over his paternal acres, peaceably and contentedly.
Not but that, like all other sovereigns, he
had his occasional cares and vexations. The
growth of his native city sometimes caused him
annoyance. His little territory gradually became
hemmed in by streets and houses, which
intercepted air and sunshine. He was now and
then subject to the irruptions of the border population,
that infest the streets of a metropolis,
who would sometimes make midnight forays into
his dominions, and carry off captive whole platoons
of his noblest subjects. Vagrant swine
the gate was left open, and lay all waste before
them; and mischievous urchins would often decapitate
the illustrious sunflowers, the glory of
the garden, as they lolled their heads so fondly
over the walls. Still all these were petty grievances,
which might now and then ruffle the surface
of his mind, as a summer breeze will ruffle
the surface of a mill-pond; but they could not
disturb the deep seated quiet of his soul. He
would but seize a trusty staff, that stood behind
the door, issue suddenly out, and annoint the back
of the agressor, whether pig, or urchin, and then
return within doors, marvellously refreshed and
tranquillized.
The chief cause of anxiety to honest Wolfert,
however, was the growing prosperity of the city.
The expenses of living doubled and trebled;
but he could not double and treble the magnitude
of his cabbages; and the number of competitors
prevented the increase of price; thus, therefore,
while every one around him grew richer, Wolfert
grew poorer, and he could not, for the life of him,
perceive how the evil was to be remedied.
This growing care, which increased from day
to day, had its gradual effect upon our worthy
burgher; insomuch, that it at length implanted
two or three wrinkles on his brow; things unknown
before in the family of the Webbers; and
it seemed to pinch up the corners of his cocked
hat into an expression of anxiety, totally opposite
to the tranquil, broad-brimmed, low-crowned
beavers of his illustrious progenitors.
Perhaps even this would not have materially
disturbed the serenity of his mind had he had only
himself and his wife to care for; but there was
his daughter gradually growing to maturity; and
all the world knows when daughters begin to
ripen no fruit or flower requires so much looking
after. I have no talent at describing female
charms, else fain would I depict the progress of
this little Dutch beauty. How her blue eyes
grew deeper and deeper, and her cherry lips redder
and redder; and how she ripened and ripened,
and rounded and rounded in the opening
breath of sixteen summers, until, in her seventeenth
her boddice, like a half blown rose-bud.
Ah, well-a-day! could I but show her as she
was then, tricked out on a Sunday morning, in
the hereditary finery of the old Dutch clothes
press, of which her mother had confided to her
the key. The wedding dress of her grandmother,
modernized for use, with sundry ornaments,
handed down as heir looms in the family. Her
pale brown hair smoothed with buttermilk in flat
waving lines on each side of her fair forehead.
The chain of yellow virgin gold, that encircled
her neck; the little cross, that just rested at the
entrance of a soft valley of happiness, as if it
would sanctify the place. The—but pooh!—it
is not for an old man like me to be prosing about
female beauty: suffice it to say, Amy had attained
her seventeenth year. Long since had
her sampler exhibited hearts in couples desperately
transfixed with arrows, and true lovers'
knots worked in deep blue silk; and it was evident
she began to languish for some more interesting
occupation than the rearing of sunflowers
or pickling of cucumbers.
At this critical period of female existence,
when the heart within a damsel's bosom, like its
emblem, the miniature which hangs without, is
apt to be engrossed by a single image, a new visiter
began to make his appearance under the roof
of Wolfert Webber. This was Dirk Waldron,
the only son of a poor widow, but who could
boast of more fathers than any lad in the province;
for his mother had had four husbands, and this
only child, so that though born in her last
wedlock, he might fairly claim to be the tardy
fruit of a long course of cultivation. This son
of four fathers united the merits and the vigour
of his sires. If he had not a great family before
him, he seemed likely to have a great one after
him; for you had only to look at the fresh gamesome
youth, to see that he was formed to be the
founder of a mighty race.
This youngster gradually became an intimate
visiter of the family. He talked little, but he
sat long. He filled the father's pipe when it
was empty, gathered up the mother's knitting-needle,
or ball of worsted when it fell to the
cat, and replenished the tea-pot for the
daughter from the bright copper kettle that sung
before the fire. All these quiet little offices may
seem of trifling import, but when true love is
translated into Low Dutch, it is in this way that
it eloquently expresses itself. They were not
lost upon the Webber family. The winning
youngster found marvellous favour in the eyes of
the mother; the tortoise-shell cat, albeit the most
staid and demure of her kind, gave indubitable
signs of approbation of his visits, the tea-kettle
seemed to sing out a cheering note of welcome
at his approach, and if the sly glances of the daughter
might be rightly read, as she sat bridling and
dimpling, and sewing by her mother's side, she
was not a whit behind Dame Webber, or grimalkin,
or the tea-kettle in good will.
Wolfert alone saw nothing of what was going
on. Profoundly wrapt up in meditation on the
growth of the city and his cabbages, he sat looking
in the fire, and puffing his pipe in silence.
One night, however, as the gentle Amy, according
and he, according to custom, took his parting salute,
the smack resounded so vigourously through
the long, silent entry, as to startle even the dull
ear of Wolfert. He was slowly roused to a new
source of anxiety. It had never entered into his
head, that this mere child who, as it seemed but
the other day, had been climbing about his knees,
and playing with dolls and baby-houses, could
all at once be thinking of love and matrimony.
He rubbed his eyes, examined into the fact, and
really found that while he had been dreaming of
other matters, she had actually grown into a
woman, and what was more, had fallen in love.
Here were new cares for poor Wolfert. He was
a kind father, but he was a prudent man. The
young man was a very stirring lad; but then he had
neither money nor land. Wolfert's ideas all ran
in one channel, and he saw no alternative in case
of a marriage, but to portion off the young couple
with a corner of his cabbage garden, the whole
of which was barely sufficient for the support of
his family.
Like a prudent father, therefore, he determined
to nip this passion in the bud, and forbad
the youngster the house, though sorely did it go
against his fatherly heart, and many a silent tear
did it cause in the bright eye of his daughter.
She showed herself, however, a pattern of filial
piety and obedience. She never pouted and
sulked, she never flew in the face of parental
authority; she never fell into a passion, or fell
into hysterics, as many romantic novel-read
young ladies would do. Not she, indeed! She
was none such heroical rebellious trumpery, I
warrant ye. On the contrary, she acquiesced like
an obedient daughter; shut the street-door in her
lover's face, and if ever she did grant him an interview,
it was either out of the kitchen window,
or over the garden fence.
Wolfert was deeply cogitating these things in
his mind, and his brow wrinkled with unusual
care, as he wended his way one Saturday afternoon
to a rural inn, about two miles from the
city. It was a favourite resort of the Dutch part
of the community from being always held by a
relish of the good old times. It was a Dutch
built house, that had probably been a country seat
of some opulent burgher in the early time of the
settlement. It stood near a point of land, called
Corlears Hook, which stretches out into the
Sound, and against which the tide, at its flux
and reflux, sets with extraordinary rapidity.
The venerable and somewhat crazy mansion
was distinguished from afar, by a grove of elms
and sycamores that seemed to wave a hospitable
invitation, while a few weeping willows with
their dank; drooping foliage, resembling falling
waters, gave an idea of coolness, that rendered
it an attractive spot during the heats of summer.
Here, therefore, as I said, resorted many of the
old inhabitants of the Manhattoes, where, while
some played at the shuffle-board and quoits and
ninepins, others smoked a deliberate pipe, and
talked over public affairs.
It was on a blustering autumnal afternoon that
Wolfert made his visit to the inn. The grove
which whirled in rustling eddies about the fields.
The ninepin alley was deserted, for the premature
chilliness of the day had driven the company
within doors. As it was Saturday afternoon,
the habitual club was in session, composed
principally of regular Dutch burghers,
though mingled occasionally with persons of various
character and country, as is natural in a
place of such motley population.
Beside the fire place, and in a huge leather
bottomed arm chair, sat the dictator of this little
world, the venerable Rem, or, as it was pronounced,
Ramm Rapelye. He was a man of
Walloon race, and illustrious for the antiquity of
his line, his great grandmother having been the
first white child born in the province. But he
was still more illustrious for his wealth and
dignity: he had long filled the noble office of
alderman, and was a man to whom the governor
himself took off his hat. He had maintained
possession of the leathern bottomed chair from
time immemorial; and had gradually waxed in
in the course of years he filled its whole magnitude.
His word was decisive with his subjects;
for he was so rich a man, that he was never expected
to support any opinion by argument.
The landlord waited on him with peculiar officiousness;
not that he paid better than his neighbours,
but then the coin of a rich man seems
always to be so much more acceptable. The
landlord had always a pleasant word and a joke,
to insinuate in the ear of the august Ramm. It
is true, Ramm never laughed, and indeed, maintained
a mastiff-like gravity, and even surliness
of aspect, yet he now and then rewarded mine
host with a token of approbation; which, though
nothing more nor less than a kind of grunt, yet
delighted the landlord more than a broad laugh
from a poorer man.
“This will be a rough night for the money
diggers,” said mine host, as a gust of wind howled
round the house, and rattled at the windows.
“What, are they at their works again?” said
an English half-pay captain, with one eye, who
was a frequent attendant at the inn.
“Aye, are they,” said the landlord, “and well
may they be. They've had luck of late. They
say a great pot of money has been dug up in the
field, just behind Stuyvesant's orchard. Folks
think it must have been buried there in old times,
by Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch Governor.”
“Fudge!” said the one-eyed man of war, as
he added a small portion of water to a bottom of
brandy.
“Well, you may believe, or not, as you please,”
said mine host, somewhat nettled; “but every
body knows that the old governor buried a great
deal of his money at the time of the Dutch
troubles, when the English red-coats seized on
the province. They say, too, the old gentleman
walks; aye, and in the very same dress that he
wears in the picture which hangs up in the
family house.”
“Fudge!” said the half-pay officer.
“Fudge, if you please!—But did'nt Corney
Van Zandt see him at midnight, stalking about
in the meadow with his wooden leg, and a
drawn sword in his hand, that flashed like fire?
people have been troubling the place where he
buried his money in old times?”
Here the landlord was interrupted by several
guttural sounds from Ramm Rapelye, betokening
that he was labouring with the unusual production
of an idea. As he was too great a man
to be slighted by a prudent publican, mine host
respectfully paused until he should deliver himself.
The corpulent frame of this mighty
burgher now gave all the symptoms of a volcanic
mountain on the point of an eruption. First,
there was a certain heaving of the abdomen, not
unlike an earthquake; then was emitted a cloud
of tobacco smoke from that crater, his mouth;
then there was a kind of rattle in the throat, as
if the idea were working its way up through a
region of phlegm; then there were several disjointed
members of a sentence thrown out, ending
in a cough; at length his voice forced its way
in the slow, but absolute tone of a man who
feels the weight of his purse, if not of his ideas;
testy puff of tobacco smoke.
“Who talks of old Peter Stuyvesant's walking?—puff—Have
people no respect for persons?—puff—puff—Peter
Stuyvesant knew better
what to do with his money than to bury it—
puff—I know the Stuyvesant family—puff—
every one of them—puff—not a more respectable
family in the province—puff—old standers—
puff—warm householders—puff—none of your
upstarts—puff—puff—puff.—Don't talk to me of
Peter Stuyvesant's walking—puff—puff—puff—
puff.”
Here the redoubtable Ramm contracted his
brow, clasped up his mouth, till it wrinkled at
each corner, and redoubled his smoking with
such vehemence, that the cloudy volumes soon
wreathed round his head, as the smoke envellops
the awful summit of Mount Etna.
A general silence followed the sudden rebuke
of this very rich man. The subject, however,
was too interesting to be readily abandoned.
The conversation soon broke forth again from
of the club, one of those narrative old men
who seem to grow incontinent of words, as they
grow old, until their talk flows from them almost
involuntarily.
Peechy, who could at any time tell as many
stories in an evening as his hearers could digest
in a month, now resumed the conversation, by
affirming that, to his knowledge, money had at
different times been dug up in various parts of
the island. The lucky persons who had discovered
them had always dreamt of them three
times before hand, and what was worthy of remark,
these treasures had never been found but
by some descendant of the good old Dutch families,
which clearly proved that they had been
buried by Dutchmen in the olden time.
“Fiddle stick with your Dutchmen!” cried
the half-pay officer. “The Dutch had nothing
to do with them. They were all buried by Kidd,
the pirate, and his crew.”
Here a key note was touched that roused the
whole company. The name of Captain Kidd
with a thousand marvellous stories.
The half-pay officer was a man of great
weight among the peaceable members of the
club, by reason of his military character, and of
the gunpowder scenes which, by his own account,
he had witnessed.
The golden stories of Kidd, however, were
resolutely rivalled by the tales of Peechy Prauw,
who, rather than suffer his Dutch progenitors
to be eclipsed by a foreign freebooter, enriched
every spot in the neighbourhood with the hidden
wealth of Peter Stuyvesant and his contemporaries.
Not a word of this conversation was lost upon
Wolfert Webber. He returned pensively home,
full of magnificent ideas of buried riches. The
soil of his native island seemed to be turned into
gold dust; and every field teemed with treasure.
His head almost reeled at the thought how often
he must have heedlessly rambled over places
where countless sums lay, scarcely covered by
the turf beneath his feet. His mind was in a
came in sight of the venerable mansion of his
forefathers, and the little realm where the Webbers
had so long, and so contentedly flourished,
his gorge rose at the narrowness of his destiny.
“Unlucky Wolfert!” exclaimed he; “others
can go to bed and dream themselves into whole
mines of wealth; they have but to seize a spade
in the morning, and turn up doubloons like potatoes;
but thou must dream of hardship, and
rise to poverty—must dig thy field from year's
end to year's end, and—and yet raise nothing but
cabbages!”
Wolfert Webber went to bed with a heavy
heart; and it was long before the golden visions
that disturbed his brain, permitted him to sink
into repose. The same visions, however, extended
into his sleeping thoughts, and assumed
a more definite form. He dreamt that he had
discovered an immense treasure in the centre of
his garden. At every stroke of the spade he
laid bare a golden ingot; diamond crosses sparkled
out of the dust; bags of money turned up
venerable doubloons; and chests, wedged close
with moidores, ducats, and pistareens, yawned
before his ravished eyes, and vomited forth their
glittering contents.
Wolfert awoke a poorer man than ever. He
had no heart to go about his daily concerns,
which appeared so paltry and profitless; but sat
all day long in the chimney corner, picturing to
himself ingots and heaps of gold in the fire. The
next night his dream was repeated. He was
again in his garden, digging, and laying open
stores of hidden wealth. There was something
very singular in this repetition. He passed
another day of reverie, and though it was cleaning
day, and the house, as usual in Dutch households,
completely topsy-turvy, yet he sat unmoved
amidst the general uproar.
The third night he went to bed with a palpitating
heart. He put on his red nightcap,
wrong side outwards for good luck. It was
deep midnight before his anxious mind could
settle itself into sleep. Again the golden dream
with ingots and money bags.
Wolfert rose the next morning in complete
bewilderment. A dream three times repeated
was never known to lie; and if so, his fortune
was made.
In his agitation he put on his waistcoat with
the hind part before, and this was a corroboration
of good luck. He no longer doubted that a huge
store of money lay buried somewhere in his cabbage
field, coyly waiting to be sought for, and he
half repined at having so long been scratching
about the surface of the soil, instead of digging to
the centre.
He took his seat at the breakfast table full of
these speculations; asked his daughter to put a
lump of gold into his tea, and on handing his wife
a plate of slap jacks, begged her to help herself to
a doubloon.
His grand care now was how to secure this
immense treasure without its being known. Instead
of working regularly in his grounds in
the day time, he now stole from his bed at night,
up and dig about his paternal acres, from one
end to the other. In a little time the whole garden,
which had presented such a goodly and regular
appearance, with its phalanx of cabbages,
like a vegetable army in battle array, was reduced
to a scene of devastation, while the relentless
Wolfert, with nightcap on head, and lantern
and spade in hand, stalked through the slaughtered
ranks, the destroying angel of his own vegetable
world.
Every morning bore testimony to the ravages
of the preceding night in cabbages of all ages
and conditions, from the tender sprout to the
full-grown head, piteously rooted from their quiet
beds like worthless weeds, and left to wither in
the sunshine. It was in vain Wolfert's wife remonstrated;
it was in vain his darling daughter
wept over the destruction of some favourite marygold.
“Thou shalt have gold of another guess
sort,” he would cry, chucking her under the
chin; “thou shalt have a string of crooked ducats
for thy wedding necklace, my child.” His family
wits were diseased. He muttered in his sleep at
night of mines of wealth, of pearls and diamonds
and bars of gold. In the day time he
was moody and abstracted, and walked about
as if in a trance. Dame Webber held frequent
councils with all the old women of the neighbourhood,
not omitting the parish dominie;
scarce an hour in the day but a knot of them
might be seen wagging their white caps together
round her door, while the poor woman made
some piteous recital. The daughter too was fain
to seek for more frequent consolation from the
stolen interviews of her favoured swain Dirk
Waldron. The delectable little Dutch songs
with which she used to dulcify the house grew
less and less frequent, and she would forget her
sewing and look wistfully in her father's face as
he sat pondering by the fire side. Wolfert
caught her eye one day fixed on him thus anxiously,
and for a moment was roused from his
golden reveries.—“Cheer up my girl,” said he,
hold up thy head one day with the—
and the Schermerhorns, the Van Hornes, and
the Van Dams—the patroon himself shall be
glad to get thee for his son!”
Amy shook her head at this vain glorious
boast, and was more than ever in doubt of the
soundness of the good man's intellect.
In the mean time Wolfert went on digging,
but the field was extensive, and as his dream
had indicated no precise spot, he had to dig at
random. The winter set in before one tenth of
the scene of promise had been explored. The
ground became too frozen, and the nights too cold
for the labours of the spade. No sooner, however,
did the returning warmth of spring loosen
the soil, and the small frogs begin to pipe in the
meadows, but Wolfert resumed his labours with
renovated zeal. Still, however, the hours of industry
were reversed. Instead of working
cheerily all day, planting and setting out his vegetables,
he remained thoughtfully idle, until the
shades of night summoned him to his secret labours.
night to night, and week to week, and month to
month, but not a stiver did he find. On the contrary,
the more he digged, the poorer he grew.
The rich soil of his garden was digged away,
and the sand and gravel from beneath were
thrown to the surface, until the whole field resented
an aspect of sandy barrenness.
In the mean time the seasons gradually rolled
on. The little frogs that had piped in the meadows
in early spring, croaked as bull-frogs in the
brooks, during the summer heats, and then sunk
into silence. The peach tree budded, blossomed,
and bore its fruit. The swallows and martins
came, twittered about the roof, built their
nests, reared their young, held their congress
along the eaves, and then winged their flight in
search of another spring. The caterpillar spun
its winding sheet, dangled in it from the great
buttonwood tree that shaded the house; turned
into a moth, fluttered with the last sunshine of
summer, and disappeared; and finally the leaves
of the buttonwood tree turned yellow, then
whirling about in little eddies of wind and dust,
whispered that winter was at hand.
Wolfert gradually awoke from his dream of
wealth as the year declined. He had reared no
crop to supply the wants of his household during
the sterility of winter. The season was long
and severe, and for the first time the family was
really straightened in its comforts. By degrees
a revulsion of thought took place in Wolfert's
mind, common to those whose golden dreams
have been disturbed by pinching realities. The
idea gradually stole upon him that he should come
to want. He already considered himself one of
the most unfortunate men in the province, having
lost such an incalculable amount of undiscovered
treasure, and now, when thousands of pounds
had eluded his search, to be perplexed for shillings
and pence was cruel in the extreme.
Haggard care gathered about his brow; he
went about with a money seeking air, his eyes
bent downwards into the dust, and carrying his
hands in his pockets, as men are apt to do when
could not even pass the city almshouse without
giving it a rueful glance, as if destind to be his
future abode.
The strangeness of his conduct and of his looks
occasioned much speculation and remark. For
a long time he was suspected of being crazy, and
then every body pitied him; at length it began
to be suspected that he was poor, and then every
body avoided him.
The rich old burghers of his acquaintance met
him outside of the door when he called, entertained
him hospitably on the threshold, pressed
him warmly by the hand on parting, shook
their heads as he walked away, with the kindhearted
expression of “poor Wolfert,” and
turned a corner nimbly, if by chance they saw
him approaching as they walked the streets.
Even the barber and cobbler of the neighbourhood,
and a tattered tailor in an alley hard by,
three of the poorest and merriest rogues in the
world, eyed him with that abundant sympathy
which usually attends a lack of means; and there
at his command, only that they happened to be
empty.
Thus every body deserted the Webber mansion,
as if poverty were contagious, like the
plague; every body but honest Dirk Waldron,
who still kept up his stolen visits to the daughter,
and indeed seemed to wax more affectionate as
the fortunes of his mistress were in the wane.
Many months had elapsed since Wolfert had
frequented his old resort, the rural inn. He was
taking a long lonely walk one saturday afternoon,
musing over his wants and disappointments,
when his feet took instinctively their
wonted direction, and on awaking out of a reverie,
he found himself before the door of the
inn. For some moments he hesitated whether
to enter, but his heart yearned for companionship;
and where can a ruined man find better companionship
than at a tavern, where there is
neither sober example nor sober advice to put
him out of countenance?
Wolfert found several of the old frequenters of
usual places; but one was missing, the great
Ramm Rapelye, who for many years had filled
the chair of state. His place was supplied by a
stranger, who seemed, however, completely at
home in the chair and the tavern. He was rather
under size, but deep chested, square and muscular.
His broad shoulders, double joints, and bow
knees, gave tokens of prodigious strength. His
face was dark and weather beaten; a deep scar,
as if from the slash of a cutlass had almost divided
his nose, and made a gash in his upper lip,
through which his teeth shone like a bull dog's.
A mass of iron gray hair gave a grizly finish to
his hard-favoured visage. His dress was of an
amphibious character. He wore an old hat edged
with tarnished lace, and cocked in martial style,
on one side of his head; a rusty blue military
coat with brass buttons, and a wide pair of short
petticoat trowsers, or rather breeches, for they
were gathered up at the knees. He ordered
every body about him, with an authoritative air;
talked in a brattling voice, that sounded like the
landlord and servants with perfect impunity, and
was waited upon with greater obsequiousness
than had ever been shown to the mighty Ramm
himself.
Wolfert's curiosity was awakened to know
who and what was this stranger who had thus
usurped absolute sway in this ancient domain.
He could get nothing, however, but vague information.
Peechy Prauw took him aside, into
a remote corner of the hall, and there in an
under voice, and with great caution, imparted to
him all that he knew on the subject. The inn
had been aroused several months before, on a
dark stormy night, by repeated long shouts, that
seemed like the howlings of a wolf. They came
from the water side; and at length were distinguished
to be hailing the house in the seafaring
manner. “House-a-hoy!” The landlord turned
out with his head waiter, tapster, hostler and errand
boy—that is to say, with his old negro Cuff.
On approaching the place from whence the voice
proceeded, they found this amphibious looking
seated on a great oaken sea chest. How he came
there, whether he had been set on shore from
some boat, or had floated to land on his chest, nobody
could tell, for he did not seem disposed to
answer questions, and there was something in
his looks and manners that put a stop to all
questioning. Suffice it to say, he took possession
of a corner room of the inn, to which his
chest was removed with great difficulty. Here
he had remained ever since, keeping about the
inn and its vicinity. Sometimes, it is true, he
disappeared for one, two, or three days at a time,
going and returning without giving any notice or
account of his movements. He always appeared
to have plenty of money, though often of very
strange outlandish coinage; and he regularly
paid his bill every evening before turning in.
He had fitted up his room to his own fancy,
having slung a hammock from the ceiling instead
of a bed, and decorated the walls with rusty
pistols and cutlasses of foreign workmanship.
A great part of his time was passed in this room,
wide view of the Sound, a short old fashioned
pipe in his mouth, a glass of rum toddy at his
elbow, and a pocket telescope in his hand, with
which he reconnoitred every boat that moved
upon the water. Large square rigged vessels
seemed to excite but little attention; but the
moment he descried any thing with a shoulder
of mutton sail, or that a barge, or yawl, or jolly
boat hove in sight, up went the telescope, and he
examined it with the most scrupulous attention.
All this might have passed without much notice,
for in those times the province was so much the
resort of adventurers of all characters and climes
that any oddity in dress or behaviour attracted
but little attention. But in a little while this
strange sea monster, thus strangely cast up on
dry land, began to encroach upon the long established
customs and customers of the place;
to interfere in a dictatorial manner in the affairs
of the ninepin alley and the bar room, until in
the end he usurped an absolute command over
the little inn. It was all in vain to attempt to
quarrelsome, but boisterous and peremptory,
like one accustomed to tyrannize on a quarter
deck; and there was a dare-devil air about every
thing he said and did, that inspired a wariness
in all bystanders. Even the half-pay officer, so
long the hero of the club, was soon silenced by
him; and the quiet burghers stared with wonder
at seeing their inflammable man of war so readily
and quietly extinguished.
And then the tales that he would tell were
enough to make a peaceable man's hair stand
on end. There was not a sea fight, or marauding,
or freebooting adventure that had happened
within the last twenty years but he seemed perfectly
versed in it. He delighted to talk of the
exploits of the buccaneers in the West-Indies
and on the Spanish Main. How his eyes would
glisten as he described the waylaying of treasure
ships, the desperate fights, yard arm and yard
arm—broadside and broadside—the boarding and
capturing of large Spanish galleons! with what
chuckling relish would he describe the descent
church; the sacking of a convent! You would
have thought you heard some gormandizer dilating
upon the roasting a savory goose at
Michaelmas as he described the roasting of
some Spanish Don to make him discover his
treasure—a detail given with a minuteness that
made every rich old burgher present turn uncomfortably
in his chair. All this would be told
with infinite glee, as if he considered it an excellent
joke; and then he would give such a
tyrannical leer in the face of his next neighbour,
that the poor man would be fain to laugh out of
sheer faint-heartedness. If any one, however,
pretended to contradict him in any of his stories
he was on fire in an instant. His very cocked
hat assumed a momentary fierceness, and seemed
to resent the contradiction.—“How the devil
should you know as well as I! I tell you it
was as I say!” and he would at the same time
let slip a broadside of thundering oaths and tremendous
sea phrases, such as had never been
heard before within those peaceful walls.
Indeed, the worthy burghers began to surmise
that he knew more of these stories than mere
hearsay. Day after day their conjectures concerning
him grew more and more wild and fearful.
The strangeness of his manners, the mystery
that surrounded him, all made him something
incomprehensible in their eyes. He was
a kind of monster of the deep to them—he was
a merman—he was behemoth—he was leviathan—in
short they knew not what he was.
The domineering spirit of this boisterous sea
urchin at length grew quite intolerable. He was
no respecter of persons; he contradicted the richest
burghers without hesitation; he took possession
of the sacred elbow chair, which time out of
mind had been the seat of sovereignty of the illustrious
Ramm Rapelye. Nay, he even went
so far in one of his rough jocular moods, as to
slap that mighty burgher on the back, drink his
toddy and wink in his face, a thing scarcely to
be believed. From this time Ramm Rapelye
appeared no more at the inn; his example was
followed by several of the most eminent customers,
out of their opinions, or being obliged to laugh
at another man's jokes. The landlord was almost
in despair, but he knew not how to get rid
of this sea monster and his sea chest, which
seemed to have grown like fixtures, or excresences
on his establishment.
Such was the account whispered cautiously in
Wolfert's ear, by the narrator, Peechy Prauw,
as he held him by the button in a corner of the
hall, casting a wary glance now and then towards
the door of the bar-room, lest he should be overheard
by the terrible hero of his tale.
Wolfert took his seat in a remote part of the
room in silence; impressed with profound awe
of this unknown, so versed in freebooting history.
It was to him a wonderful instance of the revolutions
of mighty empires, to find the venerable
Ramm Rapelye thus ousted from the throne;
a rugged tarpaulin dictating from his elbow chair,
hectoring the patriarchs, and filling this tranquil
little realm with brawl and bravado.
The stranger was on this evening in a more
a number of astounding stories of plunderings
and burnings upon the high seas. He dwelt
upon them with peculiar relish, heightening the
frightful particulars in proportion to their effect
on his peaceful auditors. He gave a long swaggering
detail of the capture of a Spanish merchantman.
She was laying becalmed during a long
summer's day, just off from an island which was
one of the lurking places of the pirates. They
had reconnoitred her with their spy glasses from
the shore, and ascertained her character and force.
At night a picked crew of daring fellows set off
for her in a whale boat. They approached with
muffled oars, as she lay rocking idly with the undulations
of the sea and her sails flapping against
the masts. They were close under her stern before
the guard on deck was aware of their approach.
The alarm was given; the pirates
threw hand grenades on deck and sprang up the
main chains sword in hand.
The crew flew to arms, but in great confusion;
some were shot down, others took refuge in the
while others fought hand to hand from the
main deck to the quarter deck, disputing gallantly
every inch of ground. There were three
Spanish gentlemen on board with their ladies,
who made the most desperate resistance, they
defended the companion way, cut down several
of their assailants, and fought like very devils,
for they were maddened by the shrieks of the ladies
from the cabin. One of the Dons was old
and soon despatched. The other two kept their
ground vigourously, even though the captain of
the pirates was among their assailants. Just
then there was a shout of victory from the main
deck. “The ship is ours!” cried the pirates.
One of the Dons immediately dropped his
sword and surrendered; the other, who was a hot
headed youngster, and just married, gave the captain
a slash in the face that laid all open. The
captain just made out to articulate the words “no
quarter.”
“And what did they do with their prisoners?”
said Peechy Prauw, eagerly.
“Threw them all overboard!” said the merman.
A dead pause followed this reply. Peechy Prauw
shrunk quietly back like a man who had unwarily
stolen upon the lair of a sleeping lion. The
honest burghers cast fearful glances at the deep
scar slashed across the visage of the stranger, and
mooved their chairs a little farther off. The seaman,
however, smoked on without moving a
muscle, as though he either did not perceive or
did not regard the unfavourable effect he had produced
upon his hearers.
The half-pay officer was the first to break the
silence; for he was continually tempted to make
ineffectual head against this tyrant of the seas,
and to regain his lost consequence in the eyes of
his ancient companions. He now tried to match
the gunpowder tales of the stranger by others
equally tremendous. Kidd, as usual, was his
hero, concerning whom he seemed to have picked
up many of the floating traditions of the province.
The seaman had always evinced a settled
pique against the red-faced warrior. On
this occasion he listened with peculiar impatience.
He sat with one arm a-kimbo, the other
small pipe he was pettishly puffing; his legs
crossed, drumming with one foot on the ground
and casting every now and then the side glance
of a basilisk at the prosing captain. At length
the latter spoke of Kidd's having ascended the
Hudson with some of his crew, to land his plunder
in secresy.
“Kidd up the Hudson!” burst forth the seaman,
with a tremendous oath; “Kidd never was
up the Hudson!”
“I tell you he was,” said the other. “Aye,
and they say he buried a quantity of treasure on
the little flat that runs out into the river, called
the Devil's Dans Kammer.”
“The Devil's Dans Kammer in your teeth!”
cried the seaman. “I tell you, Kidd never was
up the Hudson—what a plague do you know of
Kidd and his haunts?”
“What do I know?” echoed the half-pay officer;
“why, I was in London at the time of his
trial, aye, and I had the pleasure of seeing him
hanged at Execution Dock.”
“Then, sir, let me tell you that you saw as
pretty a fellow hanged as ever trod shoe leather.
Aye!” putting his face nearer to that of the officer,
“and there was many a coward looked on,
that might much better have swung in his stead.”
The half-pay officer was silenced; but the indignation
thus pent up in his bosom glowed with
intense vehemence in his single eye, which kindled
like a coal.
Peechy Prauw, who never could remain silent,
now took up the word, and in a pacifying tone
observed that the gentleman certainly was in the
right. Kidd never did bury money up the Hudson,
nor indeed in any of those parts, though
many affirmed the fact. It was Bradish and
others of the buccaneers who had buried money,
some said in Turtle Bay, others on Long Island,
others in the neighbourhood of Hell Gate. Indeed,
added he, I recollect an adventure of Mud
Sam, the negro fisherman, many years ago, which
some think had something to do with the buccaneers.
As we are all friends here, and as it will
go no farther, I'll tell it to you.
“Upon a dark night many years ago, as Sam
was returning from fishing in Hell Gate—”
Here the story was nipped in the bud by a sudden
movement from the unknown, who laying
his iron fist on the table, knuckles downward,
with a quiet force that indented the very boards,
and looking grimly over his shoulder, with the
grin of an angry bear. “Heark'ee, neighbour,”
said he, with significant nodding of the head,
“you'd better let the buccaneers and their money
alone—they're not for old men and old women
to meddle with. They fought hard for their
money, they gave body and soul for it, and
wherever it lies buried, depend upon it he must
have a tug with the devil who gets it.”
This sudden explosion was succeeded by a
blank silence throughout the room. Peechy
Prauw shrunk within himself, and even the red-faced
officer turned pale. Wolfert, who from a
dark corner of the room, had listened with intense
eagerness to all this talk about buried treasure,
looked with mingled awe and reverence on
this bold buccaneer, for such he really suspected
sparkling of jewels in all his stories about the
Spanish Main that gave a value to every period,
and Wolfert would have given any thing for the
rummaging of the ponderous sea chest, which his
imagination crammed full of golden chalices and
crucifixes and jolly round bags of doubloons.
The dead stillness that had fallen upon the
company was at length interrupted by the stranger,
who pulled out a prodigious watch of curious
and ancient workmanship, and which in Wolfert's
eyes had a decidedly Spanish look. On touching
a spring it struck ten o'clock; upon which the
sailor called for his reckoning, and having paid
it out of a handful of outlandish coin, he drank
off the remainder of his beverage, and without
taking leave of any one, rolled out of the room,
muttering to himself, as he stamped up stairs to
his chamber.
It was some time before the company could recover
from the silence into which they had been
thrown. The very footsteps of the stranger
which were heard now and then as he traversed
his chamber, inspired awe.
Still the conversation in which they had been
engaged was too interesting not to be resumed.
A heavy thunder gust had gathered up unnoticed
while they were lost in talk, and the torrents
of rain that fell forbade all thoughts of setting off
for home until the storm should subside. They
drew nearer together, therefore, and entreated
the worthy Peechy Prauw to continue the tale
which had been so discourteously interrupted.
He readily complied, whispering, however, in
a tone scarcely above his breath, and drowned
occasionally by the rolling of the thunder; and
he would pause every now and then, and listen
with evident awe, as he heard the heavy footsteps
of the stranger pacing over head.
The following is the purport of his story.
THE ADVENTURE OF SAM,
THE BLACK FISHERMAN.
COMMONLY DENOMINATED MUD SAM.
Every body knows Mud Sam, the old negro
fisherman who has fished about the Sound for the
last twenty or thirty years. Well, it is now many
years since that Sam, who was then a young fellow,
and worked on the farm of Killian Suydam
on Long Island, having finished his work early,
was fishing, one still summer evening, just
about the neighbourhood of Hell Gate. He
was in a light skiff, and being well acquainted
with the currents and eddies, he had been
able to shift his station with the shifting of
Hog's back, and from the Hog's back to the
Pot, and from the Pot to the Frying pan;
but in the eagerness of his sport Sam did not
see that the tide was rapidly ebbing; until the
roaring of the whirlpools and rapids warned him
of his danger, and he had some difficulty in
shooting his skiff from among the rocks and
breakers, and getting to the point of Black well's
Island. Here he cast anchor for some time,
waiting the turn of the tide to enable him to return
homewards. As the night set in it grew
blustering and gusty. Dark clouds came bundling
up in the west; and now and then a growl
of thunder or a flash of lightning told that a
summer storm was at hand. Sam pulled over,
therefore, under the lee of Manhattan Island, and
coasting along came to a snug nook, just under
a steep beetling rock, where he fastened his skiff
to the root of a tree that shot out from a cleft
and spread its broad branches like a canopy
over the water. The gust came scouring along;
the wind threw up the river in white surges; the
worse than that which is now bellowing, the lightning
seemed to lick up the surges of the stream;
but Sam snugly sheltered under rock and tree,
lay crouched in his skiff, rocking upon the billows
until he fell asleep. When he awoke all was
quiet. The gust had passed away, and only now
and then a faint gleam of lightning in the east
showed which way it had gone. The night was
dark and moonless; and from the state of the
tide Sam concluded it was near midnight. He
was on the point of making loose his skiff to return
homewards, when he saw a light gleaming
along the water from a distance, which seemed
rapidly approaching. As it drew near he perceived
it came from a lanthorn in the bow of a
boat which was gliding along under shadow
of the land. It pulled up in a small cove, close
to where he was. A man jumped on shore, and
searching about with the lanthorn exclaimed
“This is the place—here's the Iron ring.” The
boat was then made fast, and the man returning
on board, assisted his comrades in conveying
among them, Sam saw that they were five stout
desperate-looking fellows, in red woollen caps,
with a leader in a three-cornered hat, and that
some of them were armed with dirks, or long
knives and pistols. They talked low to one another,
and occasionally in some outlandish tongue
which he could not understand.
On landing they made their way among the
bushes, taking turns to relieve each other in
lugging their burthen up the rocky bank. Sam's
curiosity was now fully aroused, so leaving his
skiff he clambered silently up the ridge that overlooked
their path. They had stopped to rest for
a moment, and the leader was looking about
among the bushes with his lanthorn. “Have
you brought the spades?” said one. “They are
here,” replied another, who had them on his
shoulder. “We must dig deep, where there will
be no risk of discovery,” said a third.
A cold chill ran through Sam's veins. He
fancied he saw before him a gang of murderers,
about to bury their victim. His knees smote together.
a tree with which he was supporting himself as
he looked over the edge of the cliff.
“What's that?” cried one of the gang. “Some
one stirs among the bushes!”
The lanthorn was held up in the direction of
the noise. One of the red caps cocked a pistol,
and pointed it towards the very place where Sam
was standing. He stood motionless—breathless;
expecting the next moment to be his last. Fortunately
his dingy complexion was in his favour,
and made no glare among the leaves.
“ 'Tis no one,” said the man with the lanthorn.
“What a plague! you would not fire off your
pistol and alarm the country.”
The pistol was uncocked; the burthen was
resumed, and the party slowly toiled along the
bank. Sam watched them as they went; the
light sending back fitful gleams through the dripping
bushes, and it was not till they were fairly
out of sight that he ventured to draw breath
freely. He now thought of getting back to his
boat, and making his escape out of the reach of
all powerful with poor Sam. He hesitated and
lingered and listened. By and bye he heard the
strokes of spades.
“They are digging the grave!” said he to
himself; and the cold sweat started upon his
forehead. Every stroke of a spade, as it sounded
through the silent groves, went to his heart;
it was evident there was as little noise made as
possible; every thing had an air of mystery and
secresy. Sam had a great relish for the horrible,—a
tale of murder was a treat for him; and
he was a constant attendant at executions. He
could not, therefore, resist an impulse, in spite of
every danger, to steal nearer, and overlook the
villains at their work. He crawled along cautiously,
therefore, inch by inch; stepping with
the utmost care among the dry leaves, lest their
rustling should betray him. He came at length
to where a steep rock intervened between him
and the gang; he saw the light of their lanthorn
shining up against the branches of the trees on
the other side. Sam slowly and silently clambered
head above its naked edge, beheld the villains
immediately below him, and so near that though
he dreaded discovery he dared not withdraw lest
the least movement should be heard. In this
way he remained, with his round black face
peering above the edge of the rock, like the sun
just emerging above the edge of the horizon, or
the round-cheeked moon on the dial of a clock.
The red caps had nearly finished their work;
the grave was filled up, and they were carefully
replacing the turf. This done, they scattered
dry leaves over the place. “And now,” said the
leader, “I defy the devil himself to find it out.”
“The murderers!” exclaimed Sam, involuntarily.
The whole gang started, and looking up beheld
the round black head of Sam just above
them. His white eyes strained half out of their
orbits; his white teeth chattering, and his whole
visage shining with cold perspiration.
“We're discovered!” cried one.
“Down with him!” cried another.
Sam heard the cocking of a pistol, but did not
pause for the report. He scrambled over rock
and stone, through bush and briar; rolled
down banks like a hedge hog; scrambled up
others like a catamount. In every direction he
heard some one or other of the gang hemmin
him in. At length he reached the rocky ridge
along the river; one of the red caps was hard
behind him. A steep rock like a wall rose directly
in his way; it seemed to cut off all retreat,
when he espied the strong cord-like branch
of a grape vine, reaching half way down it. He
sprang at it with the force of a desperate man,
seized it with both hands, and being young and
agile, succeeded in swinging himself to the summit
of the cliff. Here he stood in full relief
against the sky, when the red cap cocked his pistol
and fired. The ball whistled by Sam's head.
With the lucky thought of a man in an emergency,
he uttered a yell, fell to the ground, and
detached at the same time a fragment of the
rock, which tumbled with a loud splash into the
river.
“I've done his business,” said the red cap, to
one or two of his comrades as they arrived panting.
“He'll tell no tales, except to the fishes in
the river.”
His pursuers now turned off to meet their companions.
Sam sliding silently down the surface
of the rock, let himself quietly into his skiff, cast
loose the fastening, and abandoned himself to
the rapid current, which in that place runs like a
mill stream and soon swept him off from the
neighbourhood. It was not, however, until he
had drifted a great distance that he ventured to
ply his oars; when he made his skiff dart like an
arrow through the strait of Hell Gate, never
heeding the danger of Pot, Frying pan, or Hogs
back itself; nor did he feel himself thoroughly
secure until safely nestled in bed in the cockloft
of the ancient farm-house of the Suydams.
Here the worthy Peechy paused to take breath
and to take a sip of the gossip tankard that stood
at his elbow. His auditors remained with open
mouths and outstretched necks, gaping like a nest
of swallows for an additional mouthful.
“And is that all?” exclaimed the half pay officer.
“That's all that belongs to the story,” said
Peechy Prauw.
“And did Sam never find out what was buried
by the red caps?” said Wolfert, eagerly; whose
mind was haunted by nothing but ingots and
doubloons.
“Not that I know of; he had no time to spare
from his work, and to tell the truth he did not
like to run the risk of another race among the
rocks. Besides, how should he recollect the spot
where the grave had been digged? every thing
would look different by daylight. And then,
where was the use of looking for a dead body,
when there was no chance of hanging the murderers?”
“Aye, but are you sure it was a dead body they
buried?” said Wolfert.
“To be sure,” cried Peechy Prauw, exultingly.
“Does it not haunt in the neighbourhood to this
very day?”
“Haunts!” exclaimed several of the party,
chairs still closer.
“Aye, haunts,” repeated Peechy, “has none
of you heard of father red cap that haunts the
old burnt farm-house in the woods, on the border
of the Sound, near Hell Gate?
“Oh, to be sure, I've heard tell of something
of the kind, but then I took it for some old
wives' fable.”
“Old wives' fable or not,” said Peechy Prauw,
“that farm-house stands hard by the very spot.
It's been unoccupied time out of mind, and stands
in a wild lonely part of the coast; but those
who fish in the neighbourhood have often heard
strange noises there; and lights have been seen
about the wood at night; and an old fellow in a
red cap has been seen at the windows more than
once, which people take to be the ghost of the
body that was buried there. Once upon a time
three soldiers took shelter in the building for the
night, and rummaged it from top to bottom,
when they found old father red cap astride of a
cider barrel in the cellar, with a jug in one hand
drink out of his goblet, but just as one of the
soldiers was putting it to his mouth—Whew!
a flash of fire blazed through the cellar, blinded
every mother's son of them for several minutes,
and when they recovered their eye sight, jug,
goblet, and red cap had vanished, and nothing
but the empty cider barrel remained.”
Here the half-pay officer, who was growing
very muzzy and sleepy, and nodding over his
liquor, with half extinguished eye, suddenly
gleamed up like an expiring rushlight.
“That's all humbug!” said he, as Peechy
finished his last story.
“Well, I don't vouch for the truth of it myself,”
said Peechy Prauw, “though all the
world knows that there's something strange
about the house and grounds; but as to the story
of Mud Sam, I believe it just as well as if it had
happened to myself.”
The deep interest taken in this conversation
by the company, had made them unconscious of
the uproar that prevailed abroad among the
by a tremendous clap of thunder. A lumbering
crash followed instantaneously that made
the building shake to its foundation. All started
from their seats, imagining it the shock of an
earthquake, or that old father red cap was
coming among them in all his terrors. They
listened for a moment but only heard the rain
pelting against the windows, and the wind howling
among the trees. The explosion was soon
explained by the apparition of an old negro's
bald head thurst in at the door, his white goggle
eyes contrasting with his jetty poll, which was
wet with rain and shone like a bottle. In a
jargon but half intelligible he announced that
the kitchen chimney had been struck with lightning.
A sullen pause of the storm, which now rose
and sunk in gusts, produced a momentary stillness.
In this interval the report of a musket was
heard, and a long shout, almost like a yell, resounded
from the shore. Every one crowded to
the window; another musket shot was heard,
a rising blast of wind. It seemed as if the cry
came up from the bosom of the waters; for
though incessant flashes of lightning spread a
light about the shore, no one was to be seen.
Suddenly the window of the room overhead
was opened, and a loud halloo uttered by the
mysterious stranger. Several hailings passed
from one party to the other, but in a language
which none of the company in the bar-room
could understand; and presently they heard the
window closed, and a great noise over head as if
all the furniture were pulled and hauled about
the room. The negro servant was summoned,
and shortly after was seen assisting the veteran
to lug the ponderous sea chest down stairs.
The landlord was in amazement. “What,
you are not going on the water in such a storm?”
“Storm!” said the other, scornfully, “do you
call such a sputter of weather a storm?”
“You'll get drenched to the skin—You'll
catch your death!” said Peechy Prauw, affectionately.
“Thunder and lightning!” exclaimed the
merman, “don't preach about weather to a man
that has cruised in whirlwinds and tornadoes.”
The obsequious Peechy was again struck
dumb. The voice from the water was again
heard in a tone of impatience; the bystanders
stared with redoubled awe at this man of storms,
who seemed to have come up out of the deep and
to be called back to it again. As, with the assistance
of the negro, he slowly bore his ponderous
sea chest towards the shore, they eyed it
with a superstitious feeling; half doubting whether
he were not really about to embark upon it
and launch forth upon the wild waves. They
followed him at a distance with a lanthorn.
“Dowse the light!” roared the hoarse voice
from the water. “No one wants lights here!”
“Thunder and lightning!” exclaimed the veteran;
“back to the house with you!”
Wolfert and his companions shrunk back in
dismay. Still their curiosity would not allow
them entirely to withdraw. A long sheet of
lightning now flickered across the waves, and
rocky point, rising and sinking with the heaving
surges, and swashing the water at every heave.
It was with difficulty held to the rocks by a
boat hook, for the current rushed furiously round
the point. The veteran hoisted one end of the
lumbering sea chest on the gunwale of the boat,
he seized the handle at the other end to lift it
in, when the motion propelled the boat from the
shore; the chest slipped off from the gunwale,
sunk into the waves, and pulled the veteran
headlong after it. A loud shriek was uttered by
all on shore, and a volley of execrations by those
on board; but boat and man were hurried away
by the rushing swiftness of the tide. A pitchy
darkness succeeded; Wolfert Webber indeed
fancied that he distinguished a cry for help, and
that he beheld the drowning man beckoning for
assistance; but when the lightning again gleamed
along the water all was drear and void. Neither
man nor boat was to be seen; nothing but
the dashing and weltering of the waves as they
hurried past.
The company returned to the tavern, for they
could not leave it before the storm should subside.
They resumed their seats and gazed on each
other with dismay. The whole transaction had
not occupied five minutes, and not a dozen words
had been spoken. When they looked at the
oaken chair they could scarcely realize the fact
that the strange being who had so lately tenanted
it, full of life and Herculean vigour, should
already be a corpse. There was the very glass
he had just drunk from; there lay the ashes from
the pipe which he had smoked as it were with his
last breath. As the worthy burghers pondered
on these things, they felt a terrible conviction of
the uncertainty of human existence, and each
felt as if the ground on which he stood was rendered
less stable by this awful example.
As, however, the most of the company were
possessed of that valuable philosophy which enables
a man to bear up with fortitude against the
misfortunes of his neighbours, they soon managed
to console themselves for the tragic end of
the veteran. The landlord was happy that the
went.
“He came in a storm, and he went in a storm;
he came in the night, and he went in the night;
he came nobody knows from whence, and he has
gone nobody knows where. For aught I know
he has gone to sea once more on his chest and may
land to bother some people on the other side of
the world! Though it's a thousand pities” added
the landlord, “if he has gone to Davy Jones
that he had not left his sea chest behind him.”
“The sea chest! St. Nicholas preserve us!” said
Peechy Prauw. “I'd not have had that sea chest
in the house for any money; I'll warrant he'd
come racketing after it at nights, and making a
haunted house of the inn. And as to his going
to sea on his chest I recollect what happened to
Skipper Onderdonk's ship on his voyage from
Amsterdam.
“The boatswain died during a storm, so they
wrapped him up in a sheet, and put him in his
own sea chest, and threw him overboard; but
they neglected in their hurry skurry to say
roared louder than ever, and they saw the dead
man seated in his chest, with his shroud for a
sail, coming hard after the ship; and the sea
breaking before him in great sprays like fire,
and there they kept scudding day after day and
night after night, expecting every moment to go
to wreck; and every night they saw the dead
boatswain in his sea chest trying to get up with
them, and they heard his whistle above the blasts
of wind, and he seemed to send great seas mountain
high after them, that would have swamped
the ship if they had not put up the dead lights.
And so it went on till they lost sight of him in
the fogs of Newfoundland, and supposed he had
veered ship and stood for Dead Man's Isle. So
much for burying a man at sea without saying
prayers over him.”
The thundergust which had hitherto detained
the company was now at an end. The cuckoo
clock in the hall struck midnight; every one
pressed to depart, for seldom was such a late
hour trespassed on by these quiet burghers. As
more serene. The storm which had lately obscured
them had rolled away, and lay piled up
in fleecy masses on the horizon, lighted up by the
bright crescent of the moon, which looked like a
silver lamp hung up in a palace of clouds.
The dismal occurrence of the night, and the
dismal narrations they had made, had left a superstitious
feeling in every mind. They cast a
fearful glance at the spot where the buccaneer
had disappeared, almost expecting to see him
sailing on his chest in the cool moonshine. The
trembling rays glittered along the waters, but all
was placid; and the current dimpled over the
spot where he had gone down. The party huddled
together in a little crowd as they repaired
homewards; particularly when they passed a
lonely field where a man had been murdered;
and he who had farthest to go and had to complete
his journey alone, though a veteran sexton,
and accustomed, one would think, to ghosts and
goblins, yet went a long way round, rather than
pass by his own churchyard.
Wolfert Webber had now carried home a fresh
stock of stories and notions to ruminate upon.
His mind was all of a whirl with these freebooting
tales; and then these accounts of pots of
money and Spanish treasures, buried here and
there and every where, about the rocks and bays
of this wild shore made him almost dizzy.
“Blessed St. Nicholas!” ejaculated he half
aloud, “is it not possible to come upon one of
these golden hoards, and so make one's self rich in
a twinkling. How hard that I must go on, delving
and delving, day in and day out, merely to
make a morsel of bread, when one lucky stroke
of a spade might enable me to ride in my carriage
for the rest of my life!”
As he turned over in his thoughts all that had
been told of the singular adventure of the black
fisherman, his imagination gave a totally different
complexion to the tale. He saw in the gang
of red caps nothing but a crew of pirates burying
their spoils, and his cupidity was once more
awakened by the possibility of at length getting
on the traces of some of this lurking wealth. Indeed,
gold. He felt like the greedy inhabitant of
Bagdad, when his eye had been greased with the
magic ointment of the dervise, that gave him to
see all the treasures of the earth. Caskets of
buried jewels, chests of ingots, bags of outlandish
coins, seemed to court him from their concealments,
and supplicate him to relieve them
from their untimely graves.
On making private inquiries about the grounds
said to be haunted by Father red cap, he was
more and more confirmed in his surmise. He
learned that the place had several times been
visited by experienced money diggers, who had
heard Mud Sam's story, though none of them
had met with success. On the contrary, they
had always been dogged with ill luck of some
kind or other, in consequence, as Wolfert concluded,
of their not going to work at the proper
time, and with the proper ceremonials. The
last attempt had been made by Cobus Quackenbos,
who dug for a whole night and met with
incredible difficulty, for as fast as he threw one
thrown in by invisible hands. He succeeded so
far, however, as to uncover an iron chest, when
there was a terrible roaring, and ramping, and
raging, of uncouth figures about the hole, and at
length a shower of blows, dealt by invisible cudgels,
that fairly belaboured him off of the forbidden
ground. This Cobus Quackenbos had declared
on his death bed, so that there could not be any
doubt of it. He was a man that had devoted
many years of his life to money digging, and it
was thought would have ultimately succeeded,
had he not died suddenly of a brain fever in the
alms house.
Wolfert Webber was now in a worry of trepidation
and impatience; fearful lest some rival
adventurer should get a scent of the buried gold.
He determined privately to seek out the negro
fisherman and get him to serve as guide to the
place where he had witnessed the mysterious
scene of interment. Sam was easily found; for
he was one of those old habitual beings that live
about a neighbourhood until they wear themselves
public characters. There was not an unlucky
urchin about town that did not know Mud
Sam the fisherman, and think that he had a right
to play his tricks upon the old negro. Sam was
an amphibious kind of animal, something more
of a fish than a man; he had led the life of an
otter for more than half a century, about the
shores of the bay, and the fishing grounds of the
Sound. He passed the greater part of his time
on and in the water, particularly about Hell Gate;
and might have been taken, in bad weather, for
one of the hobgoblins that used to haunt that
strait. There would he be seen, at all times,
and in all weathers; sometimes in his skiff, anchored
among the eddies, or prowling, like a
shark about some wreck, where the fish are supposed
to be most abundant. Sometimes seated on
a rock from hour to hour, looming through mist
and drizzle, like a solitary heron watching for its
prey. He was well acquainted with every hole
and corner of the Sound; from the Wallabout
to Hell Gate, and from Hell Gate even unto the
that he knew all the fish in the river by their
christian names.
Wolfert found him at his cabin, which was not
much larger than a tolerable dog house. It was
rudely constructed of fragments of wrecks and
drift wood, and built on the rocky shore, at the
foot of the old fort, just about what at present
forms the point of the Battery. A “most ancient
and fish-like smell” pervaded the place.
Oars, paddles, and fishing rods were leaning
against the wall of the fort; a net was spread
on the sands to dry; a skiff was drawn up on
the beach, and at the door of his cabin lay Mud
Sam himself, indulging in a true negro's luxury
—sleeping in the sunshine.
Many years had passed away since the time
of Sam's youthful adventure, and the snows of
many a winter had grizzled the knotty wool
upon his head. He perfectly recollected the
circumstances, however, for he had often been
called upon to relate them, though in his version
of the story he differed in many points from
with authentic historians. As to the subsequent
researches of money diggers, Sam knew nothing
about them; they were matters quite out of his
line; neither did the cautious Wolfert care to
disturb his thoughts on that point. His only
wish was to secure the old fisherman as a pilot
to the spot, and this was readily effected. The
long time that had intervened since his nocturnal
adventure had effaced all Sam's awe
of the place, and the promise of a trifling reward
roused him at once from his sleep and his
sunshine.
The tide was adverse to making the expedition
by water, and Wolfert was too impatient to
get to the land of promise, to wait for its turning;
they set off, therefore, by land. A walk of four
or five miles brought them to the edge of a wood,
which at that time covered the greater part of
the eastern side of the island. It was just beyond
the pleasant region of Bloomen-dael. Here
they struck into a long lane, straggling among
trees and bushes, very much overgrown with
and so completely overshadowed as to enjoy but
a kind of twilight. Wild vines entangled the
trees and flaunted in their faces; brambles and
briars caught their clothes as they passed; the
garter-snake glided across their path; the spotted
toad hopped and waddled before them, and the
restless cat-bird mewed at them from every
thicket. Had Wolfert Webber been deeply read
in romantic legend he might have fancied himself
entering upon forbidden enchanted ground;
or that these were some of the guardians set to
keep a watch upon buried treasure. As it was,
the loneliness of the place, and the wild stories
connected with it, had their effect upon his
mind.
On reaching the lower end of the lane they
found themselves near the shore of the Sound
in a kind of amphitheatre, surrounded by forest
tress. The area had once been a grass-plot,
but was now shagged with briars and rank
weeds. At one end, and just on the river bank,
was a ruined building, little better than a heap
a solitary tower out of the centre. The current
of the Sound rushed along just below it; with
wildly grown trees drooping their branches into
its waves.
Wolfert had not a doubt that this was the
haunted house of Father red cap, and called
to mind the story of Peechy Prauw. The evening
was approaching and the light falling dubiously
among these places, gave a melancholy
tone to the scene, well calculated to foster any
lurking feeling of awe or superstition. The
night hawk, wheeling about in the highest regions
of the air, emitted his peevish, boding cry.
The woodpecker gave a lonely tap now and then
on some hollow tree, and the fire bird,[2]
as he
streamed by them with his deep red plumage,
seemed like some genius flitting about this region
of mystery.
They now came to an enclosure that had once
been a garden. It extended along the foot of a
rocky ridge, but was little better than a wilderness
or a peach or plum tree grown wild and ragged,
and covered with moss. At the lower end of the
garden they passed a kind of vault in the side of
a bank, facing the water. It had the look of a
root house. The door, though decayed, was
still strong, and appeared to have been recently
patched up. Wolfert pushed it open. It gave
a harsh grating upon its hinges, and striking
against something like a box, a rattling sound
ensued, and a skull rolled on the floor. Wolfert
drew back shuddering, but was reassured on
being informed by Sam that this was a family
vault belonging to one of the old Dutch families
that owned this estate; an assertion which was
corroborated by the sight of coffins of various
sizes piled within. Sam had been familiar with
all these scenes when a boy, and now knew that
he could not be far from the place of which they
were in quest.
They now made their way to the water's edge,
scrambling along ledges of rocks, and having
often to hold by shrubs and grape vines to avoid
length they came to a small cove, or rather indent
of the shore. It was protected by steep
rocks and overshadowed by a thick copse of
oaks and chesnuts, so as to be sheltered and almost
concealed. The beach sloped gradually
within the cove, but the current swept deep and
black and rapid along its jutting points. Sam
paused; raised his remnant of a hat, and scratched
his grizzled poll for a moment, as he regarded
this nook: then suddenly clapping his hands, he
stepped exultingly forward and pointed to a large
iron ring, stapled firmly in the rock, just where
a broad shelve of stone furnished a commodious
landing place. It was the very spot where the
red caps had landed. Years had changed the
more perishable features of the scene; but rock
and iron yield slowly to the influence of time.
On looking more narrowly, Wolfert remarked
three crosses cut in the rock just above the ring,
which had no doubt some mysterious signification.
Old Sam now readily recognized the overhanging
rock under which his skiff had been
the course which the midnight gang had taken,
however, was a harder task. His mind had been
so much taken up on that eventful occasion by
the persons of the drama, as to pay but little attention
to the scenes; and places look different
by night and day. After wandering about for
some time, however, they came to an opening
among the trees which Sam thought resembled
the place. There was a ledge of rock of moderate
height like a wall on one side, which Sam
thought might be the very ridge from which he
overlooked the diggers. Wolfert examined it
narrowly, and at length descried three crosses
similar to those above the iron ring, cut deeply
into the face of the rock, but nearly obliterated
by the moss that had grown on them. His heart
leaped with joy, for he doubted not but they
were the private marks of the buccaneers, to denote
the places where their treasure lay buried.
All now that remained was to ascertain the precise
spot; for otherwise he might dig at random
without coming upon the spoil, and he had already
however, Sam was perfectly at a loss, and indeed
perplexed him by a variety of opinions; for his
recollections were all confused. Sometimes he
declared it must have been at the foot of a mulberry
tree hard by; then it was just beside a
great white stone; then it must have been under
a small green knoll, a short distance from the
ledge of rock; until at length Wolfert became
as bewildered as himself.
The shadows of evening were now spreading
themselves over the woods, and rock and tree
began to mingle together. It was evidently too
late to attempt any thing farther at present; and,
indeed, Wolfert had come unprepared with implements
to prosecute his researches. Satisfied,
therefore, with having ascertained the place, he
took note of all its landmarks, that he might recognize
it again, and set out on his return homeward,
resolved to prosecute this golden enterprise
without delay.
The leading anxiety which had hitherto absorbed
every feeling being now in some measure
up a thousand shapes and chimeras as he returned
through this haunted region. Pirates hanging
in chains seemed to swing on every tree, and
he almost expected to see some Spanish Don,
with his throat cut from ear to ear, rising slowly
out of the ground, and shaking the ghost of a
money bag.
Their way back lay through the desolate garden,
and Wolfert's nerves had arrived at so sensitive
a state that the flitting of a bird, the rustling
of a leaf, or the falling of a nut was enough
to startle him. As they entered the confines of
the garden, they caught sight of a figure at a distance
advancing slowly up one of the walks and
bending under the weight of a burthen. They
paused and regarded him attentively. He wore
what appeared to be a woollen cap, and still more
alarming, of a most sanguinary red. The figure
moved slowly on, ascended the bank, and stopped
at the very door of the sepulchral vault.
Just before entering it he looked around. What
was the horror of Wolfert when he recognized
He uttered an ejaculation of horror. The figure
slowly raised his iron fist and shook it with a terrible
menace. Wolfert did not pause to see
more, but hurried off as fast as his legs could
carry him, nor was Sam slow in following
at his heels, having all his ancient terrors revived.
Away, then, did they scramble, through bush and
brake, horribly frightened at every bramble that
tagged at their skirts, nor did they pause to
breathe, until they had blundered their way
through this perilous wood and had fairly reached
the high road to the city.
Several days elapsed before Wolfert could
summon courage enough to prosecute the enterprise,
so much had he been dismayed by the apparition,
whether living or dead, of the grizzly
buccaneer. In the mean time, what a conflict
of mind did he suffer! He neglected all his concerns,
was moody and restless all day, lost his
appetite; wandered in his thoughts and words,
and committed a thousand blunders. His rest
was broken; and when he fell asleep the nightmare
upon his breast. He babbled about incalculable
sums; fancied himself engaged in money digging;
threw the bed clothes right and left, in the idea
that he was shovelling among the dirt, groped
under the bed in quest of the treasure, and lugged
forth, as he supposed, an inestimable pot of
gold.
Dame Webber and her daughter were in despair
at what they conceived a returning touch
of insanity. There are two family oracles, one
or other of which Dutch house wives consult in
all cases of great doubt and perplexity: the dominie
and the doctor. In the present instance
they repaired to the doctor. There was at that
time a little dark mouldy man of medicine famous
among the old wives of the Manhattoes for his
skill not only in the healing art, but in all matters
of strange and mysterious nature. His name
was Dr. Knipperhausen, but he was more commonly
known by the appellation of the High German
doctor.[3]
To him did the poor women repair
vagaries of Wolfert Webber.
They found the doctor seated in his little study,
clad in his dark camblet robe of knowledge, with
his black velvet cap, after the manner of Boorhaave,
Van Helmont and other medical sages: a pair of
green spectacles set in black horn upon his clubbed
nose, and poring over a German folio that
seemed to reflect back the darkness of his physiognomy.
The doctor listened to their statement
of the symptoms of Wolfert's malady with profound
attention; but when they came to mention
his raving about buried money, the little man
pricked up his ears. Alas, poor women! they
little knew the aid they had called in.
Dr. Knipperhausen had been half his life engaged
in seeking the short cuts to fortune, in
quest of which so many a long life time is wasted.
He had passed some years of his youth in
the Harz mountains of Germany, and had derived
much valuable instruction from the miners, touching
the mode of seeking treasure buried in the
earth. He had prosecuted his studies also under
medicine with magic and legerdemain. His mind
therefore had become stored with all kinds of mystic
lore: he had dabbled a little in astrology, alchemy,
and divination; knew how to detect stolen money,
and to tell where springs of water lay hidden; in
a word, by the dark nature of his knowledge he
had acquired the name of the High German doctor,
which is pretty nearly equivalent to that of
necromancer. The doctor had often heard rumours
of treasure being buried in various parts of
the island, and had long been anxious to get on
the traces of it. No sooner were Wolfert's waking
and sleeping vagaries confided to him, than
he beheld in them the confirmed symptoms of a
case of money digging, and lost no time in probing
it to the bottom. Wolfert had long been
sorely depressed in mind by the golden secret,
and as a family physician is a kind of father confessor,
he was glad of the opportunity of unburthening
himself. So far from curing, the doctor
caught the malady from his patient. The circumstances
unfolded to him awakened all his cupidity;
somewhere in the neighbourhood of the mysterious
crosses, and offered to join Wolfert in the
search. He informed him that much secresy
and caution must be observed in enterprises of
the kind; that money is only to be digged for at
night; with certain forms and ceremonies; the
burning of drugs; the repeating of mystic words,
and above all, that the seekers must be provided
with a divining rod, which had the wonderful
property of pointing to the very spot on the surface
of the earth under which treasure lay
hidden. As the doctor had given much of his
mind to these matters, he charged himself with
all the necessary preparations, and, as the quarter
of the moon was propitious, he undertook to
have the divining rod ready by a certain night.[4]
Wolfert's heart leaped with joy at having met
with so learned and able a coadjutor. Every
thing went on secretly, but swimmingly. The
and the good women of the household lauded the
comforting effect of his visits. In the mean time
the wonderful divining rod, that great key to
nature's secrets, was duly prepared. The doctor
had thumbed over all his books of knowledge
for the occasion; and Mud Sam was engaged to
take them in his skiff to the scene of enterprise;
to work with spade and pick-axe in unearthing
the treasure; and to freight his bark with the
weighty spoils they were certain of finding.
At length the appointed night arrived for
this perilous undertaking. Before Wolfert left
his home he counselled his wife and daughter to
go to bed, and feel no alarm if he should not return
on being told not to feel alarm they fell immediately
into a panic. They saw at once by his
manner that something unusual was in agitation;
all their fears about the unsettled state of
his mind were roused with tenfold force: they
hung about him entreating him not to expose
himself to the night air, but all in vain. When
Wolfert was once mounted on his hobby, it was
no easy matter to get him out of the saddle. It
was a clear starlight night, when he issued out
of the portal of the Webber palace. He wore a
large flapped hat tied under the chin with a handkerchief
of his daughter's, to secure him from the
night damp, while Dame Webber threw her long
red cloak about his shoulders, and fastened it
round his neck.
The doctor had been no less carefully armed
and accoutred by his housekeeper, the vigilant
Frau Ilsy; and sallied forth in his camblet robe
by way of surtout; his black velvet cap under
his cocked hat, a thick clasped book under his
arm, a basket of drugs and dried herbs in one
The great church clock struck ten as Wolfert
and the doctor passed by the church yard, and
the watchman bawled in hoarse voice a long
and doleful “all's well!” A deep sleep had already
fallen upon this primitive little burgh: nothing
disturbed this awful silence, excepting now
and then the bark of some profligate night-walking
dog, or the serenade of some romantic cat.
It is true, Wolfert fancied more than once that
he heard the sound of a stealthy footfall at a
distance behind them; but it might have been
merely the echo of their own steps echoing along
the quiet streets. He thought also at one time
that he saw a tall figure skulking after them—
stopping when they stopped, and moving on
as they proceeded; but the dim and uncertain
lamp light threw such vague gleams and shadows,
that this might all have been mere fancy.
They found the negro fisherman waiting for
them, smoking his pipe in the stern of his skiff,
which was moored just in front of his little cabin.
of the boat, with a dark lanthorn, and a stone
bottle of good Dutch courage in which honest
Sam no doubt put even more faith than Dr. Knipperhausen
in his drugs.
Thus then did these three worthies embark in
their cockle shell of a skiff upon this nocturnal
expedition, with a wisdom and valour equalled
only by the three wise men of Gotham, who adventured
to sea in a bowl. The tide was rising
and running rapidly up the Sound. The current
bore them along, almost without the aid of an
oar. The profile of the town lay all in shadow.
Here and there a light feebly glimmered from
some sick chamber, or from the cabin window
of some vessel at anchor in the stream. Not a
cloud obscured the deep starry firmament, the
lights of which wavered in the surface of the
placid river; and a shooting meteor, streaking
its pale course in the very direction they were
taking, was interpreted by the doctor into a
most propitious omen.
In a little while they glided by the point of
Corlaers Hook with the rural inn which had been
the scene of such night adventures. The family
had retired to rest, and the house was dark and
still. Wolfert felt a chill pass over him as they
passed the point where the buccaneer had disappeared.
He pointed it out to Dr. Knipperhausen.
While regarding it they thought they saw
a boat actually lurking at the very place; but the
shore cast such a shadow over the border of the
water that they could discern nothing distinctly.
They had not proceeded far when they heard the
low sounds of distant oars, as if cautiously pulled.
Sam plied his oars with redoubled vigour,
and knowing all the eddies and currents of the
stream soon left their followers, if such they were,
far astern. In a little while they stretched across
Turtle bay and Kip's bay, then shrouded themselves
in the deep shadows of the Manhattan
shore, and glided swiftly along, secure from observation.
At length Sam shot his skiff into a
little cove, darkly embowered by trees, and made
it fast to the well known iron ring. They now
their various implements and proceeded slowly
through the bushes. Every sound startled them,
even that of their footsteps among the dry leaves;
and the hooting of a screech owl, from the shattered
chimney of Father red cap's ruin, made
their blood run cold.
In spite of all Wolfert's caution in taking note
of the landmarks, it was some time before they
could find the open place among the trees, where
the treasure was supposed to be buried. At
length they came to the ledge of rock; and on
examining its surface by the aid of the lanthorn,
Wolfert recognized the three mystic crosses.
Their hearts beat quick, for the momentous trial
was at hand that was to determine their hopes.
The lanthorn was now held by Wolfert Webber,
while the doctor produced the divining rod.
It was a forked twig, one end of which was grasped
firmly in each hand, while the centre, forming
the stem, pointed perpendicularly upwards.
The doctor moved this wand about, within a certain
distance of the earth, from place to place,
kept the light of the lanthorn turned full upon
it, and watched it with the most breathless interest.
At length the rod began slowly to turn.
The doctor grasped it with greater earnestness,
his hand trembling with the agitation of his mind.
The wand continued slowly to turn, until at
length the stem had reversed its position, and
pointed perpendicularly downward; and remained
pointing to one spot as fixedly as the needle
to the pole.
“This is the spot!” said the doctor in an almost
inaudible tone.
Wolfert's heart was in his throat.
“Shall I dig?” said Sam, grasping the spade.
“Post tausends, no!” replied the little doctor,
hastily. He now ordered his companions to
keep close by him and to maintain the most inflexible
silence. That certain precautions must
be taken and ceremonies used to prevent the evil
spirits which keep about buried treasure from
doing them any harm. The doctor then drew a
circle round the place, enough to include the
whole party. He next gathered dry twigs and
certain drugs and dried herbs which he had
brought in his basket. A thick smoke rose,
diffusing a potent odour, savouring marvellously
of brimstone and assafœtida, which, however
grateful it might be to the olfactory nerves of
spirits, nearly strangled poor Wolfert, and produced
a fit of coughing and wheezing that made
the whole grove resound. Doctor Knipperhausen
then unclasped the volume which he had
brought under his arm, which was printed in red
and black characters in German text. While
Wolfert held the lanthorn, the doctor, by the aid
of his spectacles, read off several forms of conjuration
in Latin and German. He then ordered
Sam to seize the pick-axe and proceed to work.
The close-bound soil gave obstinate signs of not
having been disturbed for many a year. After
having picked his way through the surface, Sam
came to a bed of sand and gravel which he threw
briskly to right and left with the spade.
“Hark!” said Wolfert, who fancied he heard
a trampling among the dry leaves, and a rustling
and they listened.—No footstep was near. The
bat flitted about them in silence; a bird roused
from its nest by the light which glared up among
the trees, flew circling about the flame. In the
profound stillness of the woodland, they could
distinguish the current rippling along the rocky
shore, and the distant murmuring and roaring of
Hell Gate.
Sam continued his labours, and had already
digged a considerable hole. The doctor stood
on the edge, reading formulæ every now and then
from the black letter volume, or throwing more
drugs and herbs upon the fire; while Wolfert
bent anxiously over the pit, watching every stroke
of the spade. Any one witnessing the scene thus
strangely lighted up by fire, lanthorn, and the reflection
of Wolfert's red mantle, might have mistaken
the little doctor for some foul magician,
busied in his incantations, and the grizzled-headed
Sam as some swart goblin, obedient to his
commands.
At length the spade of the fisherman struck
sound vibrated to Wolfert's heart. He struck
his spade again.
“'Tis a chest,” said Sam.
“Full of gold, I'll warrant it!” cried Wolfert,
clasping his hands with rapture.
Scarcely had he uttered the words when a
sound from over head caught his ear. He cast
up his eyes, and lo! by the expiring light of the
fire he beheld, just over the disk of the rock,
what appeared to be the grim visage of the
drowned buccaneer, grinning hideously down
upon him.
Wolfert gave a loud cry, and let fall the lanthorn.
His panic communicated itself to his
companions. The negro leaped out of the hole,
the doctor dropped his book and basket and began
to pray in German. All was horror and
confusion. The fire was scattered about, the
lanthorn extinguished. In their hurry skurry
they ran against and confounded one another.
They fancied a legion of hobgoblins let loose
upon them, and that they saw by the fitful
in red caps gibbering and ramping around them.
The doctor ran one way, Mud Sam another,
and Wolfert made for the water side. As he
plunged struggling onwards through bush and
brake, he heard the tread of some one in pursuit.
He scrambled frantically forward. The footsteps
gained upon him. He felt himself grasped
by his cloak, when suddenly his pursuer was
attacked in turn: a fierce fight and struggle ensued—a
pistol was discharged that lit up rock
and bush for a period, and showed two figures
grappling together—all was then darker than
ever. The contest continued—the combatants
clenched each other, and panted and groaned,
and rolled among the rocks. There was snarling
and growling as of a cur, mingled with
curses in which Wolfert fancied he could recognize
the voice of the buccaneer. He would
fain have fled, but he was on the brink of a precipice
and could go no farther.
Again the parties were on their feet; again
there was a tugging and struggling, as if strength
precipitated from the brow of the cliff and sent
headlong into the deep stream that whirled below.
Wolfert heard the plunge, and a kind of
strangling bubbling murmur, but the darkness of
the night hid every thing from view, and the
swiftness of the current swept every thing instantly
out of hearing. One of the combatants
was disposed of, but whether friend or foe Wolfert
could not tell, nor whether they might not
both be foes. He heard the survivor approach,
and his terror revived. He saw, where the profile
of the rocks rose against the horizon, a human
form advancing. He could not be mistaken:
it must be the buccaneer. Whither should
he fly! a precipice was on one side; a murderer
on the other. The enemy approached: he
was close at hand. Wolfert attempted to let
himself down the face of the cliff. His cloak
caught in a thorn that grew on the edge. He
was jerked from off his feet, and held dangling
in the air, half choaked by the string with which
his careful wife had fastened the garment round
arrived; already had he committed his soul to
St. Nicholas, when the string broke, and he
tumbled down the bank, bumping from rock to
rock and bush to bush, and leaving the red cloak
fluttering like a bloody banner in the air.
It was a long while before Wolfert came to
himself. When he opened his eyes, the ruddy
streaks of the morning were already shooting up
the sky. He found himself lying in the bottom
of a boat, grievously battered. He attempted to
sit up, but was too sore and stiff to move. A
voice requested him in friendly accents to lie still.
He turned his eyes towards the speaker: it was
Dirk Waldron. He had dogged the party, at
the earnest request of Dame Webber and her
daughter, who with the laudable curiosity of
their sex had pried into the secret consultations
of Wolfert and the doctor. Dirk had been completely
distanced in following the light skiff of
the fisherman, and had just come in time to rescue
the poor money digger from his pursuer.
Thus ended this perilous enterprise. The
back to the Manhattoes, each having some
dreadful tale of peril to relate. As to poor Wolfert,
instead of returning in triumph laden with
bags of gold, he was borne home on a shutter,
followed by a rabble rout of curious urchins. His
wife and daughter saw the dismal pageant from
a distance, and alarmed the neighbourhood with
their cries: they thought the poor man had suddenly
settled the great debt of nature in one of
his wayward moods. Finding him, however,
still living, they had him conveyed speedily to
bed, and a jury of old matrons of the neighbourhood
assembled to determine how he should be
doctored. The whole town was in a buzz with
the story of the money diggers. Many repaired
to the scene of the previous night's adventures:
but though they found the very place of
the digging, they discovered nothing that compensated
for their trouble. Some say they found
the fragments of an oaken chest, and an iron
pot-lid which savoured strongly of hidden money;
and that in the old family vault there were
In fact, the secret of all this story has never to
this day been discovered: whether any treasure
was ever actually buried at that place; whether,
if so, it was carried off at night by those who had
buried it; or whether it still remains there under
the guardianship of gnomes and spirits until it
shall be properly sought for, is all matter of conjecture.
For my part I incline to the latter
opinion; and make no doubt that great sums
lie buried, both there and in many other parts
of this island and its neighbourhood, ever since
the times of the buccaneers and the Dutch colonists;
and I would earnestly recommend the
search after them to such of my fellow citizens
as are not engaged in any other speculations.
There were many conjectures formed, also,
as to who and what was the strange man of the
seas who had domineered over the little fraternity
at Corlaers Hook for a time; disappeared
so strangely, and reappeared so fearfully. Some
supposed him a smuggler stationed at that place
among the rocky coves of the island. Others
that he was a buccaneer; one of the ancient
comrades either of Kidd or Bradish, returned to
convey away treasures formerly hidden in the
vicinity. The only circumstance that throws
any thing like a vague light over this mysterious
matter is a report which prevailed of a strange
foreign built shallop, with the look of a piccaroon,
having been seen hovering about the Sound
for several days without landing or reporting
herself, though boats were seen going to and
from her at night: and that she was seen standing
out of the mouth of the harbour, in the gray
of the dawn after the catastrophe of the money
diggers.
I must not omit to mention another report,
also, which I confess is rather apocryphal, of the
buccaneer, who was supposed to have been
drowned, being seen before daybreak, with a lanthorn
in his hand, seated astride his great sea
chest and sailing through Hell Gate, which just
then began to roar and bellow with redoubled
fury.
While all the gossip world was thus filled with
talk and rumour, poor Wolfert lay sick and sorrowful
in his bed, bruised in body and sorely
beaten down in mind. His wife and daughter did
all they could to bind up his wounds both corporal
and spiritual. The good old dame never stirred
from his bed side, where she sat knitting from
morning till night; while his daughter busied
herself about him with the fondest care. Nor
did they lack assistance from abroad. Whatever
may be said of the desertions of friends in distress,
they had no complaint of the kind to make.
Not an old wife of the neighbourhood but abandoned
her work to crowd to the mansion of Wolfert
Webber, inquire after his health and the particulars
of his story. Not one came moreover
without her little pipkin of pennyroyal, sage,
balm, or other herbtea, delighted at an opportunity
of signalizing her kindness and her doctorship.
What drenchings did not the poor Wolfert
undergo, and all in vain. It was a moving sight
to behold him wasting away day by day; growing
thinner and thinner and ghastlier and ghastlier,
old patchwork counterpane upon the jury of matrons
kindly assembled to sigh and groan and
look unhappy around him.
Dirk Waldron was the only being that seemed
to shed a ray of sunshine into this house of
mourning. He came in with cheery look and
manly spirit, and tried to reanimate the expiring
heart of the poor money digger, but it was all in
vain. Wolfert was completely done over.—If
any thing was wanting to complete his despair,
it was a notice served upon him in the midst of
his distress, that the corporation were about to
run a new street through the very centre of his
cabbage garden. He now saw nothing before
him but poverty and ruin; his last reliance, the
garden of his forefathers, was to be laid waste,
and what then was to become of his poor wife
and child.
His eyes filled with tears as they followed the
dutiful Amy out of the room one morning. Dirk
Waldron was seated beside him; Wolfert grasped
his hand, pointed after his daughter, and for the
had maintained.
“I am going!” said he, shaking his head feebly,
“and when I am gone—my poor daughter—”
“Leave her to me, father!” said Dirk, manfully—“I'll
take care of her!”
Wolfert looked up in the face of the cheery
strapping youngster, and saw there was none
better able to take care of a woman.
“Enough,” said he—“she is your's!—and
now fetch me a lawyer—let me make my will
and die.”
The lawyer was brought—a dapper, bustling,
round-headed little man, Roorback (or Rollebuck
as it was pronounced) by name. At the
sight of him the women broke into loud lamentations,
for they looked upon the signing of a
will as the signing of a death warrant. Wolfert
made a feeble motion for them to be silent.
Poor Amy buried her face and her grief in the
bed curtain. Dame Webber resumed her knitting
to hide her distress, which betrayed itself,
down and hung at the end of her peaked
nose; while the cat, the only unconcerned
member of the family, played with the good
dame's ball of worsted, as it rolled about the
floor.
Wolfert lay on his back, his nightcap drawn
over his forehead; his eyes closed; his whole
visage the picture of death. He begged the lawyer
to be brief, for he felt his end approaching,
and that he had no time to lose. The lawyer
nibbed his pen, spread out his paper, and prepared
to write.
“I give and bequeath,” said Wolfert, faintly,
“my small farm—”
“What—all!” exclaimed the lawyer.
Wolfert half opened his eyes and looked upon
the lawyer.
“Yes—all,” said he.
“What! all that great patch of land with
cabbages and sunflowers, which the corporation
is just going to run a main street through?”
“The same,” said Wolfert, with a heavy sigh,
and sinking back upon his pillow.
“I wish him joy that inherits it!” said the
little lawyer, chuckling and rubbing his hands
involuntarily.
“What do you mean?” said Wolfert, again
opening his eyes.
“That he'll be one of the richest men in the
place!” cried little Rollebuck.
The expiring Wolfert seemed to step back
from the threshold of existence: his eyes again
lighted up; he raised himself in his bed, shoved
back his red worsted nightcap, and stared
broadly at the lawyer.
“You don't say so!” exclaimed he.
“Faith, but I do!” rejoined the other. “Why,
when that great field and that piece of meadow
come to be laid out in streets, and cut up into
snug building lots—why, whoever owns them
need not pull off his hat to the patroon!”
“Say you so?” cried Wolfert, half thrusting
one leg out of bed, “why, then I think I'll not
make my will yet!”
To the surprise of every body the dying man
actually recovered. The vital spark which had
glimmered faintly in the socket, received fresh fuel
from the oil of gladness, which the little lawyer
poured into his soul. It once more burnt up into
a flame.
Give physic to the heart, ye who would revive
the body of a spirit-broken man! In a few
days Wolfert left his room; in a few days more
his table was covered with deeds, plans of streets
and building lots. Little Rollebuck was constantly
with him, his right hand man and adviser, and
instead of making his will, assisted in the more
agreeable task of making his fortune. In fact,
Wolfert Webber was one of those worthy Dutch
burghers of the Manhattoes whose fortunes have
been made, in a manner, in spite of themselves.
Who have tenaciously held on to their hereditary
acres, raising turnips and cabbages about the
skirts of the city, hardly able to make both ends
meet, until the corporation has cruelly driven
streets through their abodes, and they have suddenly
awakened out of a lethargy, and, to their
astonishment, found themselves rich men.
Before many months had elapsed a great bustling
street passed through the very centre of the
Webber garden, just where Wolfert had dreamed
of finding a treasure. His golden dream was
accomplished; he did indeed find an unlooked
for source of wealth; for, when his paternal
lands were distributed into building lots, and rented
out to safe tenants, instead of producing a
paltry crop of cabbages, they returned him an
abundant crop of rents; insomuch that on quarter
day, it was a goodly sight to see his tenants
rapping at his door, from morning to night, each
with a little round bellied bag of money, the golden
produce of the soil.
The ancient mansion of his forefathers was
still kept up, but instead of being a little yellow
fronted Dutch house in a garden, it now stood
boldly in the midst of a street, the grand house
of the neighbourhood; for Wolfert enlarged it
with a wing on each side, and a cupola or tea
room on top, where he might climb up and smoke
his pipe in hot weather; and in the course of
time the whole mansion was overrun by the
Waldron.
As Wolfert waxed old and rich and corpulent,
he also set up a great gingerbread coloured
carriage drawn by a pair of black Flanders
mares with tails that swept the ground; and to
commemorate the origin of his greatness he had
for a crest a full blown cabbage painted on the
pannels, with the pithy motto ALLES KOPF:
that is to say, ALL HEAD; meaning thereby that
he had risen by sheer head work.
To fill the measure of his greatness, in the
fullness of time the renowned Ramm Rapelye
slept with his fathers, and Wolfert Webber succeeded
to the leathern bottomed arm-chair in the
inn parlour at Corlaers Hook; where he long
reigned greatly honoured and respected, insomuch
that he was never known to tell a story
without its being believed, nor to utter a joke
without its being laughed at.
The following note was found appended to this paper in
the hand writing of Mr Knickerbocker.
“There has been
much written against the divining rod by those light minds who
are ever ready to scoff at the mysteries of nature, but I fully join
with Dr. Knipperhausen in giving it my faith. I shall not insist
upon its efficacy in discovering the concealment of stolen
goods, the boundary stones of fields, the traces of robbers and
murderers, or even the existence of subterraneous springs and
streams of water: albeit, I think these properties not to be easily
discredited; but of its potency in discovering veins of precious
metal, and hidden sums of money and jewels I have not the least
doubt. Some said that the rod turned only in the hands of persons
who had been born in particular months of the year; hence
astrologers had recourse to planetary influence when they would
procure a talisman. Others declared that the properties of the
rod were either an effect of chance, or the fraud of the holder, or
the work of the devil. Thus sayeth the reverend father Gaspard
Schott in his Treatise on Magic. `Propter hæc et similia argumenta
audacter ego pronuncio vim conversivam virgulæ befurcatæ
nequaquam naturalem esse, sed vel casu vel fraude virgulam
tractantis vel ope diaboli,' &c.
“Georgius Agricula also was of opinion that it was a mere delusion
of the devil to inveigle the avaricious and unwary into his
clutches, and in his treatise `de re Metallica,' lays particular
stress on the mysterious words pronounced by those persons who
employed the divining rod during his time. But I make not a
doubt that the divining rod is one of those secrets of natural magic,
the mystery of which is to be explained by the sympathies existing
between physical things operated upon by the planets, and
rendered efficacious by the strong faith of the individual. Let
the divining rod be properly gathered at the proper time of the
moon, cut into the proper form, used with the necessary ceremonies,
and with a perfect faith in its efficacy, and I can confidently
recommend it to my fellow citizens as an infallible means of discovering
the various places on the Island of the Manhattoes where
treasure hath been buried in the olden time.
D. K.
”
| Tales of a traveller | |