Myths and Legends of Our Own Land, vol 9 | Page 7

Valley, in the Catskills, it was affirmed that a party of
British officers buried money somewhere, when they were beset by the
farmers and hunters of that region, and never got it out of the earth
again.
On Tea Island, Lake George, the buried treasures of Lord Abercrombie
have remained successfully hidden until this day.
The oldest house at Fort Neck, Long Island, was known for years as the
haunted house, and the grave of its owner--Captain Jones--was called
the pirate's grave, for, in the last century, Jones was accused of piracy
and smuggling, and there have been those who suspected worse. A
hope of finding gold and silver about the premises has been yearly
growing fainter. Just before the death of Jones, which occurred here in
an orderly manner, a crow, so big that everybody believed it to be a
demon, flew in at the window and hovered over the bed of the dying
man until he had drawn his last breath, when, with a triumphant cry, it
flew through the west end of the house. The hole that it broke through
the masonry could never be stopped, for, no matter how often it was
repaired, the stone and cement fell out again, and the wind came
through with such a chill and such shriekings that the house had to be
abandoned.
The owner of an estate on Lloyd's Neck, Long Island, had more wealth
than he thought it was safe or easy to transport when he found the
colonies rising against Britain in 1775, and flight was imperative, for
he was known by his neighbors to be a Tory. Massing his plate, coin,
and other movables into three barrels, he caused his three slaves to bury
them in pits that they had dug beneath his house. Then, as they were
shovelling back the earth, he shot them dead, all three, and buried them,
one on each barrel. His motive for the crime may have been a fear that
the slaves would aid the Americans in the approaching struggle, or that
they might return and dig up the wealth or reveal the hiding-place to
the enemies of the king. Then he made his escape to Nova Scotia,
though he might as well have stayed at home, for the British possessed

themselves of Long Island, and his house became a place of resort for
red-coats and loyalists. It was after the turn of the century when a boat
put in, one evening, at Cold Spring Bay, and next morning the
inhabitants found footprints leading to and from a spot where some
children had discovered a knotted rope projecting from the soil.
Something had been removed, for the mould of a large box was visible
at the bottom of a pit. Acres of the neighborhood were then dug over by
treasure hunters, who found a box of cob dollars and a number of casks.
The contents of the latter, though rich and old, were not solid, and
when diffused through the systems of several Long Islanders imparted
to them a spirituous and patriotic glow--for in thus destroying the
secreted stores of a royalist were they not asserting the triumph of
democratic principles?
The clay bluffs at Pottery Beach, Brooklyn, were pierced with artificial
caves where lawless men found shelter in the unsettled first years of the
republic. A wreck lay rotting here for many years, and it was said to be
the skeleton of a ship that these fellows had beached by false beacons.
She had costly freight aboard, and on the morning after she went ashore
crew and freight had vanished. It was believed that much of the plunder
was buried in the clay near the water's edge. In the early colonial days,
Grand Island, in Niagara River, was the home of a Frenchman,
Clairieux, an exile or refugee who was attended by a negro servant.
During one summer a sloop visited the island frequently, laden on each
trip with chests that never were taken away in the sight of men, and that
are now supposed to be buried near the site of the Frenchman's cabin.
Report had it that these boxes were filled with money, but if well or ill
procured none could say, unless it were the Frenchman, and he had no
remarks to offer on the subject. In the fall, after these visits of the sloop,
Clairieux disappeared, and when some hunters landed on the island
they found that his cabin had been burned and that a large skeleton,
evidently that of the negro, was chained to the earth in the centre of the
place where the house had stood. The slave had been killed, it was
surmised, that his spirit might watch the hoard and drive away intruders;
but the Frenchman met his fate elsewhere, and his