The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-12-27

Chieans plotting to murder them. To forestall this unpleasant experience which they had inflicted upon so many others being brought home to them selves they naturally pitched the two plotters overheard, and so there were tws.
 These two derelicts were destined to long and strange companionship. They had to pass themselves off for sailors and invent some story that would take them away from the island. They succeeded in getting to California and from that time their constant aim was to establish connection with their hidden treasure. In the meantime they drifted to the mines and had a check cred career. EEach lived in terror that his companion should sneak away and get possession of the whole treasure, so they never dared to lose sight of each other. Hating and distrusting each other they yet lived closer together than brothers.
 At last the Portuguese died. The Irishman, whose name was Pete, had been boy of eighteen when he buried the treasure on Tower Island; now he was seventy, and yet he had not en- tered into possession of his riches. He began to be afraid that he should die without ever seeing them again. So he revealed the story to barber in Gil- roy who had been kind to him.
 An expedition was organized and financed by the barber, Old Pete went with 1t to show the way, Though half a century had elapsed he had not for gotten the place that had once been in- delibly fixed in his youthful memory He went straight to the spot and found everything as it had been except that a cactus had grown over the burial place of the treasure. But Pete had grown suspicious of his companions, and per- haps recollecting what he had himself done in similar position, he was afraid they might kill him when they had learned the position of the treas ure. So long as he was the only one who knew he calculated that he was safe. Neither threats nor promises availed to make him reveal the place, and as he dred not do anything alone old Pete found himself with only few feet of dirt between him and the treas ure he had longed for all his life, yet as far away from it as ever The expedi- tion returned to Guayaquil, and on the way Pete confide1 to Captain Levick, who was in command of the vessel. He was coming back in a year, he said, to dig up the treasure
 When the American expedition in the Lila and Mattie visited the islands two years had elapsed since the visit of Pete, from which Cptain Leyick con cluded that he must be dead. He there fore thought there could be no wrong in digging up the treasure and advised the Americans to try it.
 The next year the captain and mate, with Professor Beck and other scen- lists f the expedition chartered the Mary Sachse and set out on another scientific expedition. They gathered many intereting pecimens and made a good haul of the enormous tortoise of the islands which sell for from two to four hundred dollars each; but when it came to looking after the buried treas ure they found it impossible to land on Tower Island. They went home disap- pointed, but the treasure seemed to look better as 1t receded, and they re- solved to try yet another time.
 The Mary Sachs was chartered again, and this time she crried gasolene launches and a party of men deter mined to get to the island and see for 41,o,,o i1 the yarn they had been told. This time they succeeded in landing on the island and found the spot escrbed by i old Pete, cactus and all; everything, in fact but the treasure. The sand on the beach is bleached by the sun to quite a snowy whiteness in the course of a few weeks, but in the place where the trea- sure should have been it was dark, as if 1t had been freshly turned up by a spade, and some object had evidently | been removed from concealment in 1t. Then they knew that they were too late and had to console themselves with tortoises and science. The eXpe- diton returned to San Francisco cov-
 cred with glory and specimens, but the true inwardness of the trip remained untold.
 It seemed that there Is a difference between treasures in real life and in novels after all Tn real life you get [ the excitement, the murders and rob- berries and everything else that goes to make a sensational story, but the trea- sure itself melts away when you think i 1t is within your grasp
 An exception Is the man Keating,
 who is said to have attracted forth thousand dollars worth of gold and precious stones from the famous Cap | tain Kidds treasure on COcOs Island ! Everybody has heard of Captain Kidd the British naval officer who turned
 pirate. and it may be remembered that 1 his island is not so very far from the | Galapagos group, as distances go in the
 vast ocean of the Pacific. A certain Captain Gessler is at present engaged in searching for the treasure He has 1 leased the Hand and has promised to pay the Nicaraguan government royal 1 ties on what he gets.
 l About the same time that Gessler set | 5Ut for Cocos Island a man named Smith set out on an expedition with the schooner Harmony, said to be | financed by prominent San Francis cans, to find hidden treasure, in the South Sea islands. He returned with
 out any treasure and got into trouble fir obtaining money for false pretences |
 PACKING THE TURKEY. Never pack till the animal heat is |