Myths and Legends of Our Own Land, vol 9 | Page 6

and extended,
the hair was rumpled, and the brow was scowling. The frown of the
gold monster grew more awful, the stare of his eye in the starlight more
unbearable, and he was crouching and creeping as if for a spring. Mike
could endure no more. He fainted, and awakened in the morning in his
own chamber, where, to a neighbor who made an early call, he told--
with embellishments--the story of the encounter; but before he had
come to the end of the narrative the visitor burst into a roar of laughter
and confessed that he had personated the supernatural visitant, having
wagered a dozen bottles of wine with the landlord of the Boar's Head
that he could get the better of Mike Wild. For all this the old tree bore,
for many years, an evil reputation.
A Spanish galleon, the Saints Joseph and Helena, making from Havana
to Cadiz in 1753 was carried from her course by adverse winds and
tossed against a reef, near New London, Connecticut, receiving injuries
that compelled her to run into that port for repairs. To reach her broken
ribs more easily her freight was put on shore in charge of the collector
of the port, but when it was desired to ship the cargo again, behold! the
quarter part of it had disappeared, none could say how. New London
got a bad name from this robbery, and the governor, though besought
by the assembly to make good the shortage, failed to do so, and lost his
place at the next election. It was reputed that some of the treasure was
buried on the shore by the robbers. In 1827 a woman who was
understood to have the power of seership published a vision to a couple
of young blades, who had paid for it, to the effect that hidden under one

of the grass-grown wharves was a box of dollars. By the aid of a crystal
pebble she received this really valuable information, but the pebble was
not clear enough to reveal the exact place of the box. She could see,
however, that the dollars were packed edgewise. When New London
was sound asleep the young men stole out and by lantern-light began
their work. They had dug to water-level when they reached an iron
chest, and they stooped to lift it-but, to their amazement, the iron was
too hot to handle! Now they heard deep growls, and a giant dog peered
at them from the pit-mouth; red eyes flashed at them from the darkness;
a wild-goose, with eyes of blazing green, hovered and screamed above
them. Though the witch had promised them safety, nothing appeared to
ward off the fantastic shapes that began to crowd about them. Too
terrified to work longer they sprang out and made away, and
when-taking courage from the sunshine--they renewed the search, next
day, the iron chest had vanished.
On Crown Point, Lake Champlain, is the ruin of a fort erected by Lord
Amherst above the site of a French work that had been thrown up in
1731 to guard a now vanished capital of fifteen hundred people. It was
declared that when the French evacuated the region they buried money
and bullion in a well, in the northwest corner of the bastion, ninety feet
deep, in the full expectancy of regaining it, and half a century ago this
belief had grown to such proportions that fifty men undertook to clear
the well, pushing their investigations into various parts of the enclosure
and over surrounding fields. They found quantities of lead and iron and
no gold.
Follingsby's Pond, in the Adirondacks, was named for a recluse, who,
in the early part of this century, occupied a lonely but strongly guarded
cabin there. It was believed afterward that he was an English army
officer, of noble birth, who had left his own country in disgust at
having discovered an attachment between his wife and one of his
fellow- officers. He died in a fever, and while raving in a delirium
spoke of a concealed chest. A trapper, who was his only attendant in his
last moments, dug over the ground floor of the hut and found a box
containing a jewelled sword, costly trinkets, and letters that bore out
the presumption of Follingsby's aristocratic origin. What became of
these valuables after their exhumation is not known, and the existence
of more has been suspected.

Coney Island is declared to have been used by a band of pirates as the
first national sand bank, and, as these rascals were caught and swung
off with short shrift, they do say that the plunder is still to be had-- by
the man who finds it. But the hotel-keepers and three-card-monte men
are not waiting for that discovery to grow rich.
In Shandaken