The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1918-08-07
7 SUME HUNT
 FOR PIRATE GOLD
Maine Coast Visitors Find It More Fascinating Than
 Knitting.

dressed people who are to be seen coast of Maine this summer are not digging clans, nor yet hunting for submarine bases, although since the appearance of the U-boat off Cape Porpoise there has been a grand re- vival of all the stories that were afloat last year concerning caves in cliffs and caches in lonely island coves filled with oil and other supplies for the German raiders.
 At the resorts the visitors who don't knit and can't stand the piazza chat ter look around for something else to do. This year that something is treasure hunting actually looking for the buried wealth of Capt. Kidd, alias Kydde, and other profiteers of free and easy days on the broad highway of the seas. There are twenty or more places along the Maine coast where Kidd or others of his profess sion are said ohave buried wealth stolen from merchantmen of all na- tions, and it is a tradition that the master sea bandit made several trips for that purpose to Penobscot Bay and River before his disastrous voy- age to the East Coast of Africa, whence he returned to be arrested at Boston and sent to the scaffold in Eng land.
 One of the spots where Kidd is said to have secreted treasure is in the Musselridge Channel, at a. point 600 | reds toward the South Thomaston shore from Two Bush Island, and in the centre of a triangle formed by drawing a straight line from White Head to Two Bush, another from Two Bush to Owls Head, and a third back to the starting point at White Head. Hundreds of natives have. in the last hundred years, dredged and dragged the waters about this spot, without reward for their labor so far as known, and the quest is not yet aban- l doned, for an occasional fisherman makes a rty at it even in these skep- tical days, and to the summer visitor the venture is new and greatly allur- ing.
 The second place fixed upon as the burial place of pirate wealth is on Codlead marsh, where Marsh Creek joins the Penobscot River a dozen miles below Bangor and six miles from Penobscot Bay. This marsh is a ridge of loamy land about 200 acres in extent lying along the mucky banks of the creek and in the shadows of Mount Heagan, Mount Waldo and Mosquito Mountain, from which lat ter came much of the bedrock stone for the Panama Canal The ridge of clay loam from which the marsh takes the name of "Codlead'' rises 30 feet above the surface of the marsh and is two acres in area. Formerly fl was thickly wooded, but treasure seekers long ago cut off all the trees for firewood, and these same gold hunters have in the last hundred years turned over every shovelful of earth on the ridge scores of times. It is es timated that enough earth has beer overturned by the treasure seekers o1 Codlead to build entertainments and fiji cuts for a railroad twenty miles long and that that amount of labor today would command a total of $100,00C in wages-instead of which the hunt CTS for Kidd's gold got only few old rusted and battered coins, whose dis l l the diggnig since that day.
 Third and most romantic among the burial places of robber riches is where's Stony Brook empties into the Penobscot River, a mile above Fort Point light and across an arm of the bay from the old star-shaped earth work known as Fort Pownal, erected by the English about the middle Of the eighteenth century to guard the river and bay against the French.
 The story is that in 1892, when Cap tain Kidd was sailing back from Mad agascar to his death on the scaffold, he had a premonition that his veal thy associates in New York had fram- ed it up to make a scapegoat of him to save themselves, and changed his course to Penobscot Bay, coming to anchor below Fort Point. At mid night, in a. boat manned by four Af- irican slaves, he took the bulk of the treasure he had stolen from East In dia merchantmen and carried it to the mouth of Stony Brook, where it was buried in four regulation comic opera chests. having many padlocks and heavy iron strapping.
 Having thus deprived the conspira- tors at New York of any share in the treasure, Capt. Kidd ordered the four slaves into the hole above the boxes and shot them to death. after which he cross-piled the bodies, muttering some sort of an incantation, then fill ed up the hole and rowed back to his ship alone.
 He made his next landing at New port, R. l., whence he sent presents of laces and silks to the Earl of Bel mont's wife, and later went to Bos- ton, taking gifts of gold and gems to the Earl himself, but at about that time the English Parliament was wig orously putting down piracy and the best the Earl could do for Capt. Kidd was to send him to London with a kind letter of explanation, the effect of which was that within a. year Kidd was hanged.
 Many reputable citizens of Penob- scot, also, and Hancock counties have spent hours, days and even weeks, vainly digging for Kidd's and other treasures; and some of them are liv- ing today, including one or two who have confided to intimates that there Is any amount of pirate gold buried at Stony Creek and elsewhere along hte river and bay but that spooks stand guard over it, and for that req son no seeker for the treasure has ever been successful. Often, they say, the spades and picks of the hunters have grated on the iron strapping of the buried chests when a blue-white spectral light flooded the whole vii