TALES OF A TRAVELLER. PART FOURTH. THE MONEY DIGGERS. FOUND AMONG THE PAPERS OF THE LATE DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER. Now I remember those old women's words Who in my youth would tell me winter's tales; HELL GATE. ABOUT Six miles from the renowned city of the Manhattoes, and in that Sound, or arm of the sea, which passes between the main land and Nassau or Long-Island, there is a narrow strait, where the current is violently compressed between shouldering promontories, and horribly irritated and perplexed by rocks and shoals. Being at the best of times a very violent, hasty current, it takes these impediments in mighty dudgeon; boiling in whirlpools; brawling and fretting in ripples and breakers; and, in short, indulging in all kinds of wrong-headed paroxysms. At such times, wo to any unlucky vessel that ventures within its clutches. This termagant humour is said to prevail only at half tides. At low water it is as pacific as any other stream. As the tide rises, it begins to fret; at half tide it rages and roars as if bellowing for more water; but when the tide is full it relapses again into quiet, and for a time seems almost to sleep as soundly as an alderman after dinner. It may be compared to an inveterate hard drinker, who is a peaceable fellow enough when he has no liquor at all, or when he has a skin full, but when half seas over plays the very devil. This mighty, blustering, bullying little strait was a place of great difficulty and danger to the Dutch navigators of ancient days; hectoring their tub-built barks in a most unruly style; whirling them about, in a manner to make any but a Dutchman giddy, and not unfrequently stranding them upon rocks and reefs. Whereupon out of sheer spleen they denominated it Hellegat (literally Hell Gut) and solemnly gave it over to the devil. This appellation has since been aptly rendered into English by the name of Hell Gate; and into nonsense by the name of Hurl Gate, according to certain foreign intruders who neither understood Dutch nor English.-May St. Nicholas confound them! From this strait to the city of the Manhattoes the borders of the Sound are greatly diversified; in one part, on the eastern shore of the island of Mannahata and opposite Blackwell's Island, being very much broken and indented by rocky nooks, overhung with trees which give them a wild and romantic look. The flux and reflux of the tide through this part of the Sound is extremely rapid, and the navigation troublesome, by reason of the whirling eddies and counter currents. I speak this from experience, having been much of a navigator of these small seas in my boyhood, and having more than once run the MARLOW'S JEW of Malta. risk of shipwreck and drowning in the course of divers holyday voyages, to which in common with the Dutch urchins I was rather prone. In the midst of this perilous strait, and hard by a group of rocks called "the Hen and Chickens," there lay in my boyish days the wreck of a vessel which had been entangled in the whirlpools and stranded during a storm. There was some wild story about this being the wreck of a pirate, and of some bloody murder, connected with it, which I cannot now recollect. Indeed, the desolate look of this forlorn hulk, and the fearful place where it lay rotting, were sufficient to awaken strange notions concerning it. A row of timber heads, blackened by time, peered above the surface at high water; but at low tide a considerable part of the hull was bare, and its great ribs or timbers, partly stripped of their planks, looked like the skeleton of some sea monster. There was also the stump of a mast, with a few ropes and blocks swinging about and whistling in the wind, while the sea gull wheeled and screamed around this melancholy carcass. The stories connected with this wreck made it an object of great awe to my boyish fancy; but in truth the whole neighbourhood was full of fable and romance for me, abounding with traditions about pirates, hobgoblins, and buried money. As I grew to more mature years I made many researches after the truth of these strange traditions; for I have always been a curious investigator of the valuable, but obscure branches of the history of my native province. I found infinite difficulty, however, in arriving at any precise information. In seeking to dig up one fact it is incredible the number of fables which I unearthed; for the whole course of the Sound seemed in my younger days to be like the straits of Pylorus of yore, the very region of fiction. I will say nothing of the Devil's Stepping Stones, by which that arch fiend made his retreat from Connecticut to LongIsland, seeing that the subject is likely to be learnedly treated by a worthy friend and contemporary historian* whom I have furnished with particulars thereof. Neither will I say anything of the black man in a three-cornered hat, seated in the stern of a jolly boat who used to be seen about Hell Gate in stormy weather; and who went by the name of the Pirate's Spuke, or Pirate's Ghost, because I never could meet with any person of stanch credibility who professed to have seen this spectrum; unless it were the widow of Manus Conklin, the blacksmith of Frog's For a very interesting account of the Devil and his Stepping Stones, see the learned memoir read before the New-York Historical Society since the death of Mr. Knickerbocker, by his friend, an eminent jurist of the place. All this, however, was but little satisfactory in regard to the tales of buried money about which I was most curious; and the following was all that I could for a long time collect that had anything like an air of authenticity. They Neck, but then, poor woman, she was a little pur- | Measures were taken for his arrest; but he had time blind, and might have been mistaken; though they it is said, to bury the greater part of his treasures. said she saw farther than other folks in the dark. He even attempted to draw his sword and defend himself when arrested; but was secured and thrown into prison, with several of his followers. were carried to England in a frigate, where they were tried, condemned, and hanged at Execution Dock. Kidd died hard, for the rope with which he was first tied up broke with his weight, and he tumbled to the ground; he was tied up a second time, and effectually; from whence arose the story of his having been twice hanged. KIDD THE PIRATE. Some reported the spoils to have been buried in solitary unsettled places about Plymouth and Cape Cod; many other parts of the eastern coast, also, and various places in Long-Island Sound, have been gilded by these rumours, and have been ransacked by adventurous money-diggers. Such is the main outline of Kidd's history; but it has given birth to an innumerable progeny of tradiIN old times, just after the territory of the New tions. The circumstance of his having buried great Netherlands had been wrested from the hands of treasures of gold and jewels after returning from their High Mightinesses, the Lords States General his cruising set the brains of all the good people of Holland, by Charles the Second, and while it was along the coast in a ferment. There were rumours as yet in an unquiet state, the province was a favour-on rumours of great sums found here and there; ite resort of adventurers of all kinds, and particu- sometimes in one part of the country, sometimes in larly of buccaneers. These were piratical rovers of another; of trees and rocks bearing mysterious the deep, who made sad work in times of peace marks; doubtless indicating the spots where treasure among the Spanish settlements and Spanish mer- lay hidden. Of coins found with Moorish characchant ships. They took advantage of the easy access ters, the plunder of Kidd's eastern prize, but which to the harbour of the Manhattoes, and of the laxity the common people took for diabolical or magic inof its scarcely-organized government, to make it a scriptions. kind of rendezvous, where they might dispose of their ill-gotten spoils, and concert new depredations. Crews of these desperadoes, the runagates of every country and clime, might be seen swaggering, in open day, about the streets of the little burgh; elbowing its quiet Mynheers; trafficking away their rich outlandish plunder, at half price, to the wary In all the stories of these enterprises the devil merchant, and then squandering their gains in tav-piayed a conspicuous part. Either he was concilierns; drinking, gambling, singing, swearing, shout- ated by ceremonies and invocations, or some bargain ing, and astounding the neighbourhood with sudden or compact was made with him. Still he was sure brawl and ruffian revelry. to play the money-diggers some slippery trick. Some had succeeded so far as to touch the iron chest which contained the treasure, when some baffling circumstance was sure to take place. Either the earth would fall in and fill up the pit, or some direful noise or apparition would throw the party into a panic and frighten them from the place; and sometimes the devil himself would appear and bear off the prize from their very grasp; and if they visited the place on the next day, not a trace would be seen of their labours of the preceding night. At length the indignation of government was aroused, and it was determined to ferret out this vermin brood from the colonies. Great consternation took place among the pirates on finding justice in pursuit of them, and their old haunts turned to places of peril. They secreted their money and jewels in lonely out-of-the-way places; buried them about the wild shores of the rivers and sea-coast, and dispersed themselves over the face of the country. Among the agents employed to hunt them by sea was the renowned Captain Kidd. He had long been a hardy adventurer, a kind of equivocal borderer, half trader, half smuggler, with a tolerable dash of the pickaroon. He had traded for some time among the pirates, lurking about the seas in a little rakish, musquito-built vessel, prying into all kinds of odd places, as busy as a Mother Cary's chicken in a gale of wind. Such were the vague rumours which for a long time tantalized without gratifying my curiosity on the interesting subject of these pirate traditions. There is nothing in this world so hard to get at as truth. I sought among my favourite sources of authentic information, the oldest inhabitants, and particularly the old Dutch wives of the province; but though I flatter myself I am better versed than most men in the curious history of my native province, yet for a long time my inquiries were unattended with any substantial result. This nondescript personage was pitched upon by government as the very man to command a vessel fitted out to cruise against the pirates, since he knew At length it happened, one calm day in the latter all their haunts and lurking-places: acting upon the part of summer, that I was relaxing myself from the shrewd o'd maxim of "setting a rogue to catch a toils of severe study by a day's amusement in fishing rogue." Kidd accordingly sailed from New-York in in those waters which had been the favourite resort the Adventure galley, gallantly armed and duly com- of my boyhood. I was in company with several missioned, and steered his course to the Madeiras, worthy burghers of my native city. Our sport was to Bonavista, to Madagascar, and cruised at the en-indifferent; the fish did not bite freely; and we had trance of the Red Sea. Instead, however, of making war upon the pirates he turned pirate himself: captured friend or foe; enriched himself with the spoils of a wealthy Indiaman, manned by Moors, though commanded by an Englishman, and having disposed of his prize, had the hardihood to return to Boston, laden with wealth, with a crew of his comrades at his heels. His fame had preceded him. The alarm was given of the reappearance of this cut-purse of the ocean. frequently changed our fishing ground without bettering our luck. We at length anchored close under a ledge of rocky coast, on the eastern side of the island of Mannahata. It was a still, warm day. The stream whirled and dimpled by us without a wave or even a ripple, and every thing was so calm and quiet that it was almost startling when the kingfisher would pitch himself from the branch of some diy tree, and after suspending himself for a moment in the air to take his aim, would souse into the smooth is well known, he always does with buried treasure, particularly when it has been ill gotten. Be that as it may, Kidd never returned to recover his wealth; being shortly after seized at Boston, sent out to England, and there hanged for a pirate. water after his prey. While we were lolling in our boat, half drowsy with the warm stillness of the day and the dullness of our sport, one of our party, a worthy alderman, was overtaken by a slumber, and, as he dozed, suffered the sinker of his drop-line to lie upon the bottom of the ver. On waking, he About the year 1727, just at the time when earthfound he had caught something of importance, from quakes were prevalent in New-England, and shook the weight; on drawing it to the surface, we were many tall sinners down upon their knees, there lived much surprised to find a long pistol of very curious near this place a meagre miserly fellow of the name and outlandish fashion, which, from its rusted condi- of Tom Walker. He had a wife as miserly as himtion, and its stock being worm-eaten and covered self; they were so miserly that they even conspired with barnacles, appeared to have been a long time to cheat each other. Whatever the woman could under water. The unexpected appearance of this lay hands on she hid away; a hen could not cackle document of warfare occasioned much speculation but she was on the alert to secure the new-laid egg. among my pacific companions. One supposed it to Her husband was continually prying about to dehave fallen there during the revolutionary war. An-tect her secret hoards, and many and fierce were the other, from the peculiarity of its fashion, attributed conflicts that took place about what ought to have it to the voyagers in the earliest days of the settle-been common property. They lived in a forlornment; perchance to the renowned Adrian Block, looking house, that stood alone and had an air of who explored the Sound and discovered Block Island, starvation. A few straggling savin trees, emblems since so noted for its cheese. But a third, after re- of sterility, grew near it; no smoke ever curled from garding it for some time, pronounced it to be of its chimney; no traveller stopped at its door. A veritable Spanish workmanship. miserable horse, whose ribs were as articulate as the bars of a gridiron, stalked about a field where a thin carpet of moss, scarcely covering the ragged beds of pudding-stone, tantalized and balked his hunger; and sometimes he would lean his head over the "Like enough," said another of the party. "There fence, look piteously at the passer-by, and seem to was Bradish the pirate, who at the time Lord Bella-petition deliverance from this land of famine. The mont made such a stir after the buccaneers, buried house and its inmates had altogether a bad name. money and jewels somewhere in these parts or on Tom's wife was a tall termagant, fierce of temper, Long-Island; and then there was Captain Kidd-" loud of tongue, and strong of arm. Her voice was "Ah, that Kidd was a daring dog," said an iron-often heard in wordy warfare with her husband; and faced Cape Cod whaler. "There's a fine old song about him, all to the tune of "I'll warrant," said he, "if this pistol could talk it would tell strange stories of hard fights among the Spanish Dons. I've not a doubt but it's a relique of the buccaneers of old times." his face sometimes showed signs that their conflicts were not confined to words. No one ventured, however, to interfere between them; the lonely wayfarer shrunk within himself at the horrid clamour and clapper-clawing; eyed the den of discord askance, his celibacy. And it tells how he gained the devil's good graces and hurried on his way, rejoicing, if a bachelor, in by burying the Bible: I had the Bible in my hand, Egad, if this pistol had belonged to him I should set some store by it out of sheer curiosity. Ah, well, there's an odd story I have heard about one Tom Walker, who, they say, dug up some of Kidd's buried money; and as the fish don't seen to bite at present, I'll tell it to you to pass away time." THE DEVIL AND TOM WALKER. A FEW miles from Boston, in Massachusetts, there is a deep inlet winding several miles into the interior of the country from Charles Bay, and terminating in a thickly-wooded swamp, or morass. On one side of this inlet is a beautiful dark grove; on the opposite side the land rises abruptly from the water's edge, into a high ridge on which grow a few scattered oaks of great age and immense size. It was under one of these gigantic trees, according to old stories, that Kidd the pirate buried his treasure. The inlet allowed a facility to bring the money in a boat secretly and at night to the very foot of the hill. The elevation of the place permitted a good look-out to be kept that no one was at hand, while the remarkable trees formed good landmarks by which the place might easily be found again. The old stories add, moreover, that the devil presided at the hiding of the money, and took it under his guardianship; but this, it One day that Tom Walker had been to a distant part of the neighbourhood, he took what he considered a short cut homewards through the swamp. Like most short cuts, it was an ill-chosen route. The swamp was thickly grown with great gloomy pines and hemlocks, some of them ninety feet high; which made it dark at noon-day, and a retreat for all the owls of the neighbourhood. It was full of pits and quagmires, partly covered with weeds and mosses; where the green surface often betrayed the traveller into a gulf of black smothering mud; there were also dark and stagnant pools, the abodes of the tadpole, the bull-frog, and the water-snake, and where trunks of pines and hemlocks lay half drowned, half rotting, looking like alligators, sleeping in the mire. Tom had long been picking his way cautiously through this treacherous forest; stepping from tuft to tuft of rushes and roots which afforded precarious footholds among deep sloughs; or pacing carefully, like a cat, along the prostrate trunks of trees; startled now and then by the sudden screaming of the bittern, or the quacking of a wild duck, rising on the wing from some solitary pool. At length he arrived at a piece of firm ground, which ran out like a peninsula into the deep bosom of the swamp. It had been one of the strong-holds of the Indians during their wars with the first colonists. Here they had thrown up a kind of fort which they had looked upon as almost impregnable, and had used as a place of refuge for their squaws and children. Nothing remained of the Indian fort but a few embankments gradually sinking to the level of the surrounding earth, and already overgrown in part by Daks and other forest trees, the foliage of which formed a |