The New York herald., 1921-08-07
Tales Of the Big Muddy.

which it is reported that a Wichita
man is seeking to recover treasure
ship lost sixty years ago in that
treacherous stream. When this craft
sank the swiftly changing current and
the shifting sand buried wealth, iron
bound and oak encased. as great, ac-
cording TO the Wichita treasure
hunter, as the tabled Rheingold.
The story OF this wreck is much
the same as that Of the many others
which go to make up the more or
less mythical history Of navigation on
the Big Muddy fifty or seventy-fVe
years ago. The statement that our
rivers lack romance and legends does
| not apply to this mad, muddy stream,
for stories OF wild Western adventure,
Indian warfare and perils, lost boats,
sunken treasures and fortunes in
land made by the queer freaks Of
the river or OF towns and homes
greedily devoured by the current
abound from Bluffton in Missouri to
the Kate Sweeney bend in South Da-
kota. In 1861, according to one of
these legends, the steamboat City OF
Higbee, bound up stream from st.
Louis, struck a cottonwood snag in
the darkness just below the bluffs of
Kansas City which ripped open her
huh and sent her to the bottom.
Passengers and crew were saved
but everything else aboard was lost.
The next morning the top Of the
smokestack only was visible; in a
month the channel shifted and within
two years corn was growing on the
site of the wreck. The Wichita treas
ure seeker says that this land now
belongs TO him and that the only
thing necessary to recover the lost
cargo is to dig down at spot known
alone to him. There lie buried, he
says, in this craft furs, Government
money and supplies and 314 barrels
OF old Kentucky's most famous prod
uct, which has been aging and ripen-
ing as if it were in a dark and airless
cellar for all these sixty years. He
estimates the value of this one item
at $2,000,000, provided, of course, he
can sell it.
There is no doubt that up-Missouri
folks OF those early days were par
tial to liquid corn products, for there
is scarcely wreck in which the loss
OF many barrels, jugs or casks Of
whiskey is not reported. When in
1855 the Kate Sweeney, the founder
ing OF which gave to the treacherous
upriver bend its name, made her last
upstream voyage almost her whole
cargo was whiskey. The Urilda,
which sank at the same place, car
ried down 200 barrels. Not drop OF
this was ever recovered, though, as
q South Dakotan said. men have
spent as much time searching for
the lost cargo as they did for Black
Hills gold The City of Providence,
one OF the finest OF Missouri River
passenger boats, took fire when rae
ing with the Nebraska City and was
beached on an Iowa nat across the
river from Omaha. The boat entirely
disappeared in the sand, but for years
afterward a Missourian devoted all
his time to searching for the 5000
jugs of whiskey which we're hidden
away in the wreck.
With the North Alabama searchers
had better luck, for ten years after
she sank she stuck her nose up in a
cornfleld half a mile away and her
cargo Of some hundred barrels OF
well aged whiskey enriched COM
munity that had been robbed Of acres
OF fertile farm land by the rivers
erratic change OF channels. The
wreck about which there has been
perhaps the most speculation was
that of the Arabia, which, local his
tory reports, sank above Kansas City
in 1856, carrying down with her 1900
casks OF the finest of Kentucky
whiskey. 1t is an interesting and
notable fact that in every case the
submerged liquor is declared to be of
an unusually excellent grade. Ap-
parently nothing except the best was
transported on these boats.
Several years ago when a plan
was discussed for recovering this
treasure a Kansas City paper pub
lished statement that years before
the boat had been reached by Sc
cretly sinking caisson a mile away
from the river bank and that the
men who explored the wreck said
There's nothing to be found" it
was never clear whether this meant
that the searchers had been unre-
warded or that they had carried
away all that was worth salvage.
Thirsty west Missourians. recalling
the bibulous days when the expedi.
tion was said to have been under
taken, incline TO the opinion that il
was successful.
In all 900 river boats were lost in
the early navigation OF the Missouri,
and the comparatively few attempts
at salvage apparently give the Wich-
tia man ground for believing that